ATTEMPTS to tackle British poverty are being hindered by increasingly harsh public attitudes and degrading stereotypes, a York expert has warned.

Julia Unwin, writing in a new book, says political efforts have reached a stalemate due to entrenched views on both the left and right, and says hostility towards those in need has replaced compassion.

Mrs Unwin, chief executive of the York-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation, says failing to tackle poverty is hugely wasteful, costing the country the skills and productivity needed to compete internationally.

She said that despite centuries of effort, poverty remained a problem in Britain and called for a new commitment to improving life for the worst-off.

She said the issue was being compounded by unhelpful rhetoric and narratives around poverty and the poor, which demonised those in need, created fear of poverty and the poor, and furthered the idea that poor people were different.

Television shows such as Shameless have turned poverty into a “spectator sport” she says, fuelling a culture of animosity towards the poor.

Polls show falling sympathy for those in need – the proportion of people who believe cutting benefits would lead people to stand on their own two feet rose from 33 per cent in 1987 to 54 per cent in 2011.

In Why Fight Poverty?, Mrs Unwin writes: “Our current debate has become poisonous, and generations of sympathy have been relatively recently replaced with naked hostility.” She said “malevolent intent or benign ignorance” had created powerful stereotypes and said emotion was skewing the debate around poverty.

“The fight against poverty in the UK has become at the same time both angry and fruitless,” she says in her introduction.

The book, which will be launched this Saturday at Bristol’s Festival of Economics, has been praised by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who used his keynote address at the General Synod on Tuesday to warn of rising poverty.

He called the book powerful and hard-hitting and said: “Simplistic understandings of poverty coupled with our current attitudes and prejudices are blocking effective reform and human lives are wasted as a result.

“Julia Unwin shows we can tackle this through a new social contract but only if we commit together to long-term and consistent solutions. An excellent book which will make a major contribution to help tackle the root causes of poverty in the UK today.”


Changing attitudes towards the poor

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation – and the Rowntree family before that – have been studying and trying to alleviate poverty for more than 100 years.

Yet problems of inequality, marginalisation and exclusion from society have persisted down the decades. The enduring impasse is what prompted Julia Unwin to write her new book, she told The Press.

“When I was offered the chance to write the book, I thought it would be interesting to look not at why people are poor, but why we find it so difficult to make progress. I think there are economic and social responses and also political responses but emotions get in the way.”

She says negative emotions around poverty include shame, fear, disgust, hostility and a sense of difference, and says those attitudes are fuelled by television and some of the national press.

“The stories we tell and are told – far more than the facts – play a major role in shaping attitudes and political decisions. In the United Kingdom and the United States, there is a rich tradition of storytelling and novel writing as a form of social protest. Our literature is full of stories and characters that have moulded attitudes to poverty.”

She cites Dickens as sympathetic, portraying “full and rounded” characters who are struggling. But more modern portrayals, she says, are far harsher. Television shows such as Shameless and Skint – a documentary about an estate in Scunthorpe, she says, present the poor as “feckless architects of their own fate” and do not differentiate between the mass of “the problem poor”.

Mrs Unwin writes: “Many people believe poverty does not exist in the UK or that it does not matter – deeply held views that accord with their experience. Any attempt to address rising levels of poverty needs to understand these views and take them very seriously indeed.”

Speaking to The Press, she added: “It feels we are tough on welfare but not tough on the causes of welfare. People are not on welfare because they want to be.”

She says UK poverty is real and affects a sizeable portion of our population and says that although work to reduce it is often unpopular, contested and slow to be rewarded, it is vital for the good of the country.

“Why fight poverty? Because we can fight it and win,” she says. “By refusing to do so we are entrenching disadvantage in our fractured society and doing it in a way that will cost future generations dear.”