In a recent interview with Martin Durkin in Front Page magazine I was shocked to see such an outrageous misrepresentation of Britain, the Welfare State and statistical bias so steeped with classism and bigotry that the only comparison I can draw is that of the BNP’s attitude to race and equality.

Martin Durkin starts to compare 1950’s Britain with 2008 Britain. The first and most poignant mistake in his diatribe:

“In the 1950s, the typical working man and his wife In Britain lived in an income-tax free existence. They kept every penny they earned. For an unmarried teenager, there was no council flat (the ‘projects’ I think you call them), no rent rebate, no rate rebate, no housing benefit or anything else. The burden of looking after her and the child fell on her family, friends or charity.”

For some mothers the stigma of raising a ‘bastard’ child was so great that women suffered terribly attempting back room abortions, which often harmed the child and mother. Also, the social exclusion from the family could lead to terrible hardships with no support leading to greater poverty and abuses of the child and mother. Is this something we really want to go back to?

My father grew up in the 1950’s in extremely difficult circumstances. This was not the rosy picture Martin Durkin is trying to present. With no housing estates the slums were extremely basic, with no hot water, no inside toilet, carpets or in some cases, running water. The reality of post-war working class England was of an impoverished and extremely difficult existence. Both my grandparents worked hard to support the family as they had no choice. There was very little support if anything went wrong, which, considering the industry my grandfather worked in was a real risk. The working classes relied on each other because the State, the wealthy and the elite tended to ignore them as a ‘minority’. Yes, there may have been no income tax for the lowest paid, but the wages were pitiful anyway. While the poorest in the cities languished in slums the rural poverty was extreme with many fatherless families from the war struggling to farm effectively, often they were working simply to survive.

In the 50’s the abuses to children and mothers were not recorded with any accuracy, policing was extremely basic compared with modern practices with many domestic crimes ignored, and with many poverty stricken families literally having no opportunity to change their lives.

“The growth of welfare benefits has been huge since that time. And within that system a pregnant girl gets special treatment (top of the state housing list etc). The fear has gone. The old idea, “Don’t, for heaven’s sake, get pregnant. It would be a disaster” has gone. For many girls, getting pregnant is a ticket to get out of the parental home. This has been the subject of detailed studies. A ten percent increase in benefits, one of them finds, tends to increase the prevalence of single mothers by 17 percent. “

The growth of welfare benefits now protects vulnerable women, to assume that it is the main driving factor that creates single mothers is the single most damaging idea you could tout. There have been, and will always be single mothers/fathers. It is the nature of modern society where people have more choices rather than being controlled and dominated by families and attitudes that stigmatise and target them. By bringing back draconian attitudes you will only drive these people into greater hardship.

“The Welfare State, pioneered in Britain of course, has corrupted this country to its core. It has transformed the country caricatured by Noel Coward and others – essentially pretty decent, self-reliant, and plucky – into a country which is thuggish, selfish, mindless, dispirited and lost. Gone is the British stiff upper lip. Modern Britons are moaning, self-pitying inadequate. The welfare state has bred a generation of obnoxious, drug-addled criminals and ne’er-do-wells. It has also, incidentally, burdened what was once the world’s biggest, most dynamic economy with the dead weight of an obstructive and vastly expensive state machine.”

Firstly the Welfare State has acted as a safety net to provide the basics for the most impoverished people in the country, if you consider basic social justice as ‘corrupt’ then indeed you truly represent the classic, arrogant, elitism that has ground people into the dirt in the preceding centuries. National identity is a vast and complex area and to use Noel Cowards representations on national identity as the basis for your own ideals of the ‘British’ truly shows how utterly incredulous your argument is. Noel Coward was an elitist playboy who cavorted and lived like a hedonist while my Grandfather fought in second world war. How could you possibly use his vague national description as a stamp of identity for the British?

“Gone is the British stiff upper lip. Modern Britons are moaning, self-pitying inadequate.”

This is by far one of the most insulting statements about our nation I have ever read, particularly from a fellow countryman. Martin’s views quite evidently adhere to the cliché persona of the Victorian British identity that has been dead for nearly a century. The ‘stiff upper lip’ idiom, is vastly inadequate to describe modern British culture and life, it shocks me that such hyperbole can still be spouted from someone who has by all accounts been educated and lives a privileged life.

Modern Britons still face a vast gap in wealth and education between the rich and poor. For many the Welfare State has offered a chance to ‘even the odds’, and I know that when I claimed income support many years ago, it gave me the chance to enter College and University and vastly changed my life’s potential, something my grandparents never had. Without the support of the state and the Princes Trust my life would be vastly different. This is the same for the majority of people who have had to claim benefits, it is an essential lifeline.

It is with pride that I pay my tax knowing that even though a small portion will go to benefit thieves that the majority will help some poor bugger get off the street, or others to raise a family in a respectable way or enable someone else to go to college like I did. I, like the majority, understand this and are certainly not “moaning, self-pitying, inadequate” but are proud to contribute.

“It’s clear now that in removing economic necessity from people’s lives (which is what welfare does), we risk sinking into barbarism.”

Economic necessity is caused by financial inequality, and without a Welfare State the banks would completely dominate the most financially vulnerable. The rampant and out of control lending by Banks especially within the sub-prime market, is a direct example of this attempt to exploit the poorest. The morale collapse in society isn’t within the Welfare State or within the unemployed or the minds of the British but within the financial systems that have pushed many working families into poverty through pure greed. There again Martin I’m sure you personally don’t have to worry about that do you?