Inciting hatred against the poor and hungry – a new British bigotry

Hate attacks against poor people are fashionable at the moment.

Even people in the most dire of circumstances are fair game for bigoted attacks and smears.

Katy Hopkins is a prime example. Katy is the most minor of media ‘personalities’ (a failed contestant on a reality TV show) but got widespread coverage for her comments attacking people who are so poor they must rely on a food bank.

It should be remembered that to be eligible for a box of food from a food bank one must fill in a detailed form proving your poverty and even then you can only receive one voucher for three days emergency food if a care professional like a doctor or a social worker issues you with one.

That sounds like a slow, humiliating and temporary measure to me – if I had the money I would go to the shops every time before putting myself through that. But food banks are not for people with choices – they are a desperate option for desperate people.

Katy Hopkins however knows better and was quick to take the platform of a TV appearance to make her point – calling food banks “a complete con”  and saying she wouldn’t have opened a single one.

Anyone going to a food bank she opined was clearly “sponging off the state when they could be out working”, saying that people on benefits “are happy to sit there, lie in bed and let other people work for them”.

Note the absolute black and white certainties of the bigot – all people on benefits are spongers in the same way that a bigot labels all young black men as muggers or all Muslims as terrorists. Same shit different target, but for some reason its ok right now to throw hatred at poor people.

Edwina Currie also has things to say about people getting three days of emergency food via a voucher from their doctor or care worker. She told BBC Radio Stoke:

‘”I get very, very troubled at the number of people who are using food banks who think that it’s fine to pay to feed their dog, their dog is in good nick and beautiful, but they never learn to cook, they never learn to manage and the moment they’ve got a bit of spare cash they’re off getting another tattoo.”

Of course as any bigot knows, anyone who falls on hard times has a dog and a multitude of tattoos. Perhaps the 23,000 professionals who sign the foodbank vouchers just have a ‘poor person checklist’ and count the numbers of dogs and tattoos as certified proof of being a bona fide scrounger.

In a rebuttal to Edwina Curries’ attack the Trussell Trust said: “Readers must choose who they believe: the thousands of professionals who refer clients to food banks, or Edwina Currie”

I suspect it doesn’t matter, the job is done for Edwina and her ilk, the stereotypical smears are out there in the public domain and cannot be taken back. This is why we have laws against hate speech in this country – why haven’t Katy and Edwina been arrested?

Why is hate speech against those with less money, tolerated, even considered fashionable and courageous, when similar language applied on the grounds of race and religion is illegal?

Edwina is not alone – who could forget the avalanche of tweets attacking those tricked into taking part in Channel 4’s ‘Benefits Street’

• “what a bunch of lowlife scum a bullet costs about 30p  so we could sort the street out and have change from £20″
• “I want to walk down with a baseball bat and brain a few of these scumbags,”
• “…such scrounging bastards”
• “These people on actually need put down (sic). Especially the two bragging about being benefit frauds. Scum”
• “People like these deserve to be ate alive by pigs”
• “Need to be dragged into the street and shot in the head. Put them out of our misery. ”
• “Benefits street – a channel 4 documentary, telling the story of how it would look if primitive apes lived in everyday society. Filth.”

..

Not pretty is it? Imagine the (rightful) outcry if those tweets were hurled at an ethnic or religious minority? Arrests would surely have followed – but poor people are fair game it seems.

Michael Gove MP claimed Food Bank users were “Not able to manage their finances” – the clear implication being that all food bank users are feckless.

Vale of Glamorgan MP Alun Cairns railed against food bank users for their “inability to manage money and to budget, addiction to alcohol or substance misuse, bullying at home,”  and of “neglect by the benefit recipient.” which is a whole bagful of witless stereotypes for the price of one stupid M.P.

Chris Steward, a Conservative councillor, said living standards had surged, that there was no need for food banks, that they were an insult to starving people around the world, and that donating to them allowed recipients to spend more money on alcohol and cigarettes. No doubt the booze and fags were secondary to dog food and tattoos.

Not that prejudice and bigotry are confined to the swivel eyed sections of the tory party, it rears its head in the unlikeliest of places – step forward Guardian columnist Deborah Orr writing about the furore surrounding the aforementioned ‘Benefits Street’.

My feeling is that the show probably disturbs many on the left because it confirms the cliches they often find unhelpful. Everyone’s skint, but everyone smokes. Quite a few people have iPhones, laptops, computer games. They pick up bits of work, sometimes criminal work, and don’t declare it. They never seem to cook “proper” food. They drink. They take drugs, and are often either active or recovering addicts. Their houses and gardens are a mess. They swear in front of the kids. They offer no boundaries to protect the kids from the adult chaos around them, with predictable results. Even the ones who say they enjoy their lives are dependent on anti-depressants. They complain all the time that their benefits aren’t enough.

Who knew all this? Everybody, surely?

Well no everybody didn’t know it – because those paragraphs are textbook bigotry and prejudice. Judging people by an external indicator, in this case – money, and inferring knowledge based on that sole criteria. Real people are a complex mess of human differences – rich and poor alike.

That Ms Orr was just gliding on the uplifts from prevailing public sentiment is not difficult to spot. After praising ‘Benefits Street’ for being “a sad and touching documentary, which takes the time to offer a nuanced depiction of people” she bizarrely admits that she hadn’t even watched the episode that caused so much controversy and the subsequent twitter hate storm (she only watched one of three episodes in fact).

It seems in the current climate,  naked prejudice needs not even the pretence of justification or evidence and Ms Orr was happy to laud the craft and the makers of ‘Benefits Street’ (Love Films) without even troubling herself to watch it.

When a middle class Guardian columnist can get away with such lazy journalism and bland assumptions about people she has never met (or even watched on TV) one can be certain that the prevailing climate is ugly indeed.

The Conservative Party is keen to expunge the political embarrassment caused by the explosive growth in the number of food banks. Their strategy is to unite behind the implication that food bank users are feckless unwashed scroungers, grabbing a lifestyle opportunity afforded to them by well meaning do-gooders, – its a cynical and ugly tactic but very easy to spot.

Sadly the Labour Party’s response has been tempered by fear of the right wing tabloids and it seems the much needed forceful ethical backlash against this new form of British hate speech will have to come from elsewhere.

That food bank users are blamed for their own impoverishment is to imply that they have more choices, power and agency than the banks that created the 2007/8 financial crash and the political establishment that bailed them out with our money.

That the Red Cross has to distribute food parcels in this country for the first time since 1948 shows a sickness at the core of one of the world’s richest nations – anger about that sickness should not be directed against the people who are obliged to endure its symptoms, but against the government which has overseen such a shameful development.

We must not allow this perversion of the truth and the crass scapegoating of the poorest in British society to remain unchallenged.

Let us not judge people by the colour of their skin, their religious beliefs, their gender or by their relative poverty.

This country has a tradition of fairness and compassion that needs to be urgently rediscovered, certainly a society divided against itself will only suit those with the basest of motives and intentions.

I urge readers of this blog to confront each and every instance of hate speech against the poor wherever and whenever they encounter it. The only way to change the prevailing moral climate is to change it – and the only people that can change it are us.

Bullies are always cowards – so when it becomes clear to the right wing press and the political strategists that the tide has turned against bashing the victims of austerity rather than the creators, they’ll fall in line and say they were as shocked as anyone.