28.03.1996

Pitying their victims

Rarely can there have been such a blatant exposure of truly breath-taking hypocrisy as that displayed at a conference on poverty in London last week.

Organised by the Church Action on Poverty charity, the conference gathered together, alongside well-meaning social workers and hand-wringing priests, a worthy assembly of establishment dignitaries: church leaders, MPs and business people. They shook their heads in patronising concern as they listened to the ‘testimony’ of single parents, prostitutes, alcoholics and homeless people - all victims of the capitalist system they so heartily endorse - and had the gall to praise their ‘courage’.

There were many desperate stories for them to hear: single parents forced to put their children into care, or even on the ‘at risk’ register in order to provide them with basic necessities; teenagers who preferred to sleep rough rather than risk the violence of poverty-stricken parents who have turned to alcohol to escape oppression and frustration; prostitutes who have suffered repeated rape and beatings.

But what could the establishment figures offer their victims? Nothing but further half-hearted attempts to relieve the symptoms of their oppression: more shelters for the homeless, more refuges for the victims of violence. As for combating the capitalist disease itself - not a chance.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, stressed his own poor upbringing on a council estate and called ‘Lisa’, the prostitute who addressed the conference, “a courageous woman ... my sister”. But he went on to praise the system in both its Tory and Labour varieties: “I believe in the enterprise society. I also believe in the stakeholder society. But neither will be satisfactory if people feel excluded,” he said.

This strikes at the heart of the dilemma facing the bourgeoisie. The crisis the system faces means that more and more workers will be driven from relative to absolute pauperisation. But the discontent and alienation that causes will tend to undermine its stability and ultimately threaten its very survival.

Alan Fox