In a society ridden with inequality, the demonization of poor people is not accidental. It is a convenient means of justifying unfair distributions of wealth and power: of cementing the idea that those at the bottom deserve their place. Neither is it new. In his 1930s classic The Road to Wigan Pier, British author George Orwell recounts that ‘a middle-class child is taught almost simultaneously to wash his neck, to be ready to die for his country, and to despise the “lower classes”.’
In Victorian Britain, the ‘residuum’ was used in much the same way as ‘underclass’ is deployed today. In the late 19th century Arnold White – a rightwing demagogue who would not be out of place in the current political climate – argued that only one in five jobless Britons were ‘genuinely unemployed’. Another 40 per cent were simply ‘feckless and incapable’, while the remaining 40 per cent were wholly degenerate. Such arguments are disturbingly familiar today.
