The Real Cultural Crisis Facing Britain’s Benefits Class

The story about a family of benefits’ recipients buying £4 tickets for the Tower of London, rather than the £111 charged to non-welfare claimants, marks a return to the Eliza Doolittle school of social engineering. If we just show the peasant underclass how the other half live, perhaps they’ll all start behaving. In many ways, the ruling elites should be thrilled that 106,000 benefits claimants used the special £1 tickets last year to visit Historic Royal Palace properties and 300,000 to visit London Zoo. (Figures, however are not available for Westminster Abbey or St. Pauls. I have a feeling the up take might not be quite as enthusiastic.) There will be a spreadsheet somewhere detailing how many ‘vulnerable children’ or ‘socio-economically deprived’ were reached with this latest noblesse oblige endeavour.

The obvious two-tier injustice of this system (and others) has been much commented upon. I believe we should be less concerned about the occasional ‘treat’ (if ‘family days out are ever anything less than excruciating misery), and rather more about the culturally arid conditions in which the benefits class live for the majority of the year. And if that sounds condescending then I apologise, but not as condescending as the suggestion that a visit to the Cutty Sark will in any meaningful way improve the benefits’ class of almost 10 million people.

The question of how to help the benefits class / deserving / undeserving poor, break free of their social and intellectual confines is one that is not new. From Lady Bountiful, Toynbee Hall, the 19^th century Children’s Country Holiday’s Fund to the most recent cheap tickets to visitor attractions, it has long been posited that with exposure to education, culture and fresh air, the underclass would reform themselves into more competent people. 

It’s a compelling idea and one that is shared by people across the political spectrum. James Graham, the brilliant playwright of This House and Dear England, funded over 5,000 Nottinghamshire state school children to his latest extraordinary play Punch. He was interviewed by Radio Four’s Nick Robinson and swallowed back tears when he spoke about the sheer unfairness of certain segments of society not watching theatre and his admirable attempts to help them do so.

Alas, what Graham misses, and what the bitterness about cheap day tickets misses, is the fact that ‘culture’ in all forms is wholly absent from great swathes of the population for the majority of their lives. A trip to the theatre or a discounted Eden Project is not going to change that. It is this everyday absence that should anger. Art, music, philosophy, the theatre, history, literature, beauty, poetry, the glories of the countryside, of attempting to dissolve time and capture the human condition and creation, in song, or on canvas or with words – are endeavours that do not touch the lives of millions of people in Britain today. It is difficult to convey to the intellectually lively readership of the Daily Sceptic, the anti-cultural milieux in which the benefits class live. I work with such people and do. 

Again apologies for the Lady Bountiful patronising tone here, but in my professional capacity I have come to have a thorough understanding of what passes for interests for a large number of people on benefits. These include: nail art, bronzer, eyelashes, energy drinks, branded clothing, trainers, watching football, taper fades, new vape flavours, the best vendor for black market cigarettes, tattoo art, gaming, scrolling, Ozempic, watching series and new iPhones. The majority of homes I visit to support uneducated children, are entirely bereft of books or other reading material. My great-grandfather was for a while, after fighting throughout the Great War, an unemployed member of this class. Times were different then; he sang in the church choir, went on bike rides in the countryside, was a member of the lending library, played football. Over 100 years ago, the means were there to combine poverty with a cultural participation in communal life and heritage beyond his immediate grim circumstances.

Today, the world as experienced by the modern equivalents of my workless great-grandfather is narrower and lived through screens within small walls. Being ‘entertained’ is sovereign and, if streaming services become dull, then drama amongst friends, family and neighbours is created instead. The number of times I’ve visited homes and been deluged with long stories about minor events that have caused all sorts of ‘shit-talking’: a parcel not delivered, a dog barking at another dog, someone looking. 

Numerous families I’ve worked with have refused visits to art galleries or museums, woodlands or antique shops saying “they’re boring”. And perhaps indeed they are. What I, a now socially elevated middle-class square, take as universally appealing endeavours: beautiful art, interesting ideas, heart-stopping landscapes, are viewed by many others as “dogshit”. 

Now the question of course is, does this matter? Why the hurry to encourage the benefits class to visit sites of cultural enrichment and then complain when they take advantage of cheap tickets to York Castle Museum? If it was the case, as in Titanic, where the third class are having a swell time dancing and singing, compared with the stolid emptiness of the upper decks, then fine. But this is not happening. I’ve yet to meet one person from a family on benefits who sings with others, plays an instrument, who dances.

Longitudinal evidence from the DWP and ONS reveals the unsurprising news that benefits claimants have notably higher rates of ill health, elevated mortality risk and deeper and persistent poverty compared to the general population. Nine million adults are on anti-depressants, with the benefits class twice as likely to receive prescriptions than other groups. The Sutton Trust reports on the 21st-century decline in social mobility. It is well reported but largely ignored that white boys on free school meals (i.e., the sons of the benefits class) have the worst educational outcomes of all socio-economic groups. 

I see every day with my work the personal result of a culturally denuded interior life for children: despair, purposelessness, self-harm, over-eating, an attraction to confected groups providing empty meaning.

None of this will be solved busing in children to watch West End theatre, or letting families have cheaper tickets to RHS Wisley. If we want those at the bottom of society to lead flourishing lives – which I dedicate my working life to supporting – and to share in the glories of our heritage, then what is required is the weaving in, and the participating of culture, into everyday life. The return of daily singing assemblies throughout school, edtech-free classrooms, story-led rather than data-led reading, more intellectually and practically nourishing curriculums, narrative history lessons, practical art, music, dance and drama lessons in every school and community, a massive limitation on smartphone use for children and, yes, youth clubs. And for the adults: jobs.

Mary Gilleece is an education support worker and her name is a pseudonym.