Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tackling the giant evil of idleness

This year has seen a gruesome series of stories bearing out the Broken Society narrative, starting with teenagers shooting each other and ending with Karen Matthews abducting her own daughter in search of a McCann-style reward. Look at most of these stories, including Baby P, and there is a common theme: they take place in welfare ghettoes, those oases of deprivation in every British city. While we should condemn the evil, we should also condemn something the system that incubates the evil. There was a reason that Beveridge called idleness a “giant evil”. As I say in my News of the World column today when you pay people to do nothing you mess with human nature.

This point was put very well by Sir Norman Bettison, chief constable of West Yorkshire Police, which investigated Shannon Matthews’ abduction. 

 “Here are almost hidden, secret parts of our community. People who actually don’t socialise beyond a small group of people. No holidays, no going to town, no going to the cinema. If it doesn’t go on in their house, or a house nearby, it doesn’t happen as far as they’re concerned. And what that means is that they are not socialised in the way that society is generally socialised in terms of norms of behaviour. Norms of behaviour are, for them, whatever they can get away with.”

So the horizontal ties that used to bind people to their communities are replaced by vertical ties that bind them to the state. Karen Matthews saw kids as a meal ticket, she had seven of them by six fathers, and she clocked up £1,400 a month on benefits which she called “my wage”. You can call her a slob, a sponger, all the rest of it. But she didn’t do anything illegal.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in