Tony Blair came to power very keen to promote traditional families and certainly he is always looking for an opportunity to be photographed with his own. But the outcry after New Labour cut lone-parent benefit and launched a Christian fundamentalist campaign to promote marriage, led the Blairites to put 'The Family' on the back bumer.
Instead, they switched to a repressive campaign, stereotyping children in lowincome families as juvenile delinquents and truants. How else can anyone interpret Blair's announcement that he wanted to see housing benefit removed or child benefit docked from families whose children got into trouble or truanted?
Such measures mean nothing to those with mortgages or for whom child benefit does not make up the difference between surviving from week-to-week and running up debt, or not having enough money for food or fuel. Nor would they affect those whose children go fairly happily to school because they face a bright future with plenty of opportunities to earn a good living.
Whilst the government talks about tackling child We have .... the highest child poverty in Europe ... ..... i poverty, it refuses to accept any responsibility for the social problems that poverty and inequality cause. Instead they blame parents, teachers anyone but themselves.
In Britain one-in-three children live in poverty -more than four million working-class children, up from one-in-ten in 1979. We now have the highest level of child poverty in Western Europe. Wage inequality is greater than in any other industrialised country, other than the US, which means that work isnt necessarily a route out of poverty.
The staggering increase in child poverty is the direct result of the neo-liberal policies of Thatcher, continued by the Blair government. Cuts in the real value of benefits by around 10%, cuts in public expenditure, casualisation and privatisation leading to lower pay and worse conditions and the attack on trade union and workers rights have all undermined the well being of workingclass people.
Most poor children will never be involved in antisocial behaviour. Instead, poverty undermines their development and quality of
Hundreds of thousands of working-class children lack sound shoes and warm, waterproof coats. They are often bullied at school because their parents can't afford good quality school uniforms or sports equipment with the most fashionable brands.
Their suffers because there is no money for an adequate diet and they have little access to leisure activities and days out. And all this in a society where millions are paid out in bonuses to those who play the stock exchange or ruin previously public servicAnother major reason for the growth in child poverty is the continuing discrimination against women. Lonemother families make up one quarter of families with children, yet half of all poor children live in them.
The growth in lone parenthood would not have led to increased poverty if it were not for the benefit cuts, which treated the unpaid work women do in caring for dependants with contempt, labelling them as
For those who want to work, the difficulties of combining caring for children with work, the continuing low pay, the lack of opportunity for promotion and to undertake education and training that women with children experience means they are often forced to go into low-paid, dead-end 'women's jobs. In middle and old age they will still be amongst the poor in spite of all their efforts.
The fact that lone mothers and their children are now more likely to be poorer than pensioners, shows how little progress has been made in tackling inequality and the disadvantages experienced by women, especially mothers.
Many working class families with two parents, but only one person in work, also find it hard to get out of poverty. There are also still high levels of unemployment in many areas where industries have been destroyed. Where they have been replaced at all it has been by low-paid service work.
The small increases to the children's allowances in Income Support and Child Benefit, which New Labour has introduced, are not enough to lift children out of poverty. There needs to be big increases in out-of-work benefits. Most parents do make sacrifices to give their children more of a very small income.
But parental sacrifice doesn't lift families out of poverty and over time it undermines the whole family's health and morale. The poverty of children cannot be treated separately from the poverty of their parents.
It's no good giving child benefit with one hand but denying decent benefits to adults and a minimum wage, which lifts workers out of poverty.
Pay needs to be increased in the public and service sectors where many of the parents of poor children work. Tackling poverty is also about good public services such as good affordable housing and local facilities, providing free good quality childcare and covering the cost of school uniforms, meals and activities.
It also means creating jobs where people live and tackling the long-standing inequality, which working class women especially face