Laptop problems a couple of weekends ago led to me actually settling down to read a book- Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby, to be precise. Dickens has a wonderful way of describing what life was like for the Victorian poor, of describing what it was like to scrape a living in any way you could. Even those with what we would think of as decent office jobs were often still despearately poor and at the mercy of their masters- Bob Cratchit, for example. Being able to save up for the future was as much of an impossible dream as it is for many today, with every penny needed to pay the rent and keep the household fed, clothed and warm. A single incident outside a person's control- illness, a rise in prices, loosing your job- could drop an entire family from 'getting on all right' into poverty at a moment's notice, and there was no safety net of the welfare state.
Any of that sound familiar? It did to me. As I was reading I kept thinking how little some things have changed. Low paid employees (the retail and service sector today as much as office and manufacturing) are still at the mercy of their employees, particularly temporary or part time workers. Often rules supposedly imposed for the good of employees aren't enforced- even the minimum wage- as employers today complain about employee rights stifling business growth. Well, call me a radical, but I can't help but think that if you can't afford to pay decent wages to your employees and treat them as human beings rather than robots, your business probably has other problems. With plans afoot to refuse legal aid for employment matters the situation isn't likely to get much better. Perhaps we need reminding why some of these laws were brought in.
While reading I kept wondering what Dickens would have written about had he been writing today. Would Fagin's gang have been drug dealers in inner city estates? What would he have had to say about Coketown's post-industrial decline? Would Paris be replaced in A Tale of Two cities by Tripoli, or Kabul, or Cairo?
One thing he wouldn't have had to change is the unpleasant portrayal of bankers and money-lenders. Nicholas Nickleby even has a cameo by a corrupt MP! Unfortunately some things do not change. But sometimes I think we find it hard to accept how little change has been made in some areas. We can accept poverty in past, or far away in Africa. But the statistics that show how many children in this country, in 2011 are living in poverty are too hard to handle. We categorise all those without jobs, for whatever reason, as 'lazy dole scum' and think that all those who are homeless are to blame for their plight.
But today, like in the nineteenth century, it can take very little for a seemingly comfortable family- or individual*- to find themselves in real difficulty- for food, for heating (a BBC report last week said that a fifth of households in Britain are affected by fuel poverty, and costs are still rising) and for accommodation. Selling off council houses was great for the families that could buy them, but no so great for their children who now have little access to affordable housing.
This wasn't intended as rant, merely a reflection on what a modern Dickens would be writing about today. I wonder if there is anyone writing with the same knowledge and ability to evoke the world of the poor as completely as he did? Given our cynicism today it would be quite a challenge to make critics understand what that world is really like, and to stop them in their calls to tear apart the safety net of the welfare state.
Unfortunately, whereas Dickens' characters all seem to end up at least comfortably off- due to mysterious benefactors, jovial philanthropists, rich relations' wills or just hard work and good luck; many people today are still hoping, like Mr Micawber in David Copperfield, for something to turn up.
Personally, I would love bump into some benevolent benefactor in the street, who would decide to give me a good job and ensure the people around me got the help and security they need. Unfortunately that's still in the realm of fiction.
* Individuals are actually often worse off. Without legal dependents, and still classed as 'young,' if I were to loose my job and accommodation I'd be a very low priority for help from the overstretched local authority. And to anyone who says that's what housing benefit is for, that really only covers rent (for a single room) if you're lucky. Deposits, bills etc are another matter. Not to mention getting a landlord who's willing to take you.
