SOURCE: The Tablet
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| Nurse Shirley Chaplin is not allowed to wear a crucifix at work |
The abuse aimed at the present Archbishop, Justin Welby,
when he recently spoke out against cuts to the benefits
paid to the poorest in society may simply be confirmation
that he was doing his job. The same process may be at work
when the Chancellor of the Exchequer rages at what he
called “vested interests”.
The Government’s programme of welfare reform, the
biggest shake-up of the Welfare State since its inception,
has revealed an uncomfortable truth about the state of
British society. An effective system of welfare provision
depends on a minimum degree of solidarity. That seems to
have shrunk. The Government has chosen to undermine it
further. It found it was pushing at an open door, due to a
rising culture of individualism.
Ministers produced a poisonous narrative of “skivers and strivers”, those who go to work in the morning and those who lie in bed “with the blinds closed”, confident that their daily bread will be paid for by the labour of others. In reality the great majority of those on benefit are in work, for wages well short of what a family needs to live on, and most of the rest are desperate for a job.
Under such conditions, people eye each other suspiciously. The Government has also abandoned the comprehensive principle, by which every section of society had some stake in the Welfare State and hence something to lose if it was weakened. Perhaps only the state pension still enjoys a wide measure of support, which may be why the Prime Minister has treated the remaining universal benefits for the elderly as sacrosanct.
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This is not only unjust politics but poor economics. The economy badly needs a boost to domestic demand, by people going into shops and spending their money. If they have less they will spend less. Far from the slack in the economy being taken up, generating income both for welfare purposes and infrastructure investment, it will remain stagnant. Unable to achieve its strategic aim of paying down the national deficit, the Government will sooner or later look for even more cuts, and take even more money out of the economy.
If persecution is the price for saying all this, the Churches should not flinch. It is they who have the interests of the whole community at heart.
