It was me. I am responsible for the credit crunch, the recession, increases in unemployment, the government cuts, austerity measures and, in part, the recent riots in London and other major cities.

Me and millions of others, that is. Us. Once I became a homeowner around 10 years ago getting my foot on the property ladder, loans and credit cards were offered and mistakenly accepted while I lived a lifestyle far beyond what I was actually earning. I believed and was told that the property boom would go on for ever and I could just continue cashing in on the rising value of my property.

None of my actions were illegal, criminal or arguably immoral, just misguided and a bit stupid. Luckily I have stayed in work but the ability to borrow more has completely gone and I am now living a lifestyle way below my earnings as a large proportion of my income goes on paying off the debt I ran up in the boom years.

I was, however, going along with the crowd, accepting the premise that if I wanted a new phone, iPod or laptop, I shouldn’t have to do without when there was plenty of credit available to just get it and worry about paying it back later. Everyone, it seemed, was doing it, and seemingly getting away with it so it became acceptable.

Many are writing elsewhere that this type of crowd behaviour is part of the reason for the riots we have seen in the last week. That in a similar way, when everyone seems to be doing it, seems to be getting away with it and benefitting from it, it becomes acceptable to join in. The major difference between borrowing too much in the credit bubble and looting and burning high street shops is that the latter is illegal; it impacts directly on shopkeepers, other businesses and the general public and it puts lives at risk.

The looting was (and I hope I’m correct in referring to it in the past tense now) it seems mostly perpetrated by those that ‘we’ call ‘them’. We are the law abiding majority. With unemployment nudging eight per cent, we are the 92% who are in work or comfortably retired. We have all the power, all the wealth and all the opportunity. The credit crunch and recession has affected us, our incomes are stagnant or falling while inflation rises, we fear for our jobs and our future prospects and pensions. We are the ‘squeezed middle’, but real poverty has not come our way.

In this us-and-them society, ‘they’ are seen as the problem. Such a relatively small group in society gets massive coverage in popular culture  and the mainstream media (Shameless, Harry Enfield, Catherine Tate and Little Britain to name but a few). They are seen as feckless workshy layabouts sponging off the state and believing that it owes them a living. They are caricatured as stupid ‘chavs’, uncultured, uneducated, with terrible dress sense and (horror!) terrible speech, grammar, spelling and punctuation. They are pilloried, far more than corporate tax avoiders, for not only benefit dependency but benefit fraud. Further opprobrium is heaped upon their women (but not their men) for having too many children, by too many partners which they can’t afford and who they expect the state to take care of and to open the door for them to get a council flat. They claim to be poor but they all have mobile phones and most of them smoke. And they have all mod cons like playstations, widescreen TVs and new trainers, things we can’t always afford. And it’s all on the state. Finally, the received wisdom is that when they aren’t lazing around on the sofa watching, or often appearing on, Jeremy Kyle, they are probably out robbing, thieving and dealing drugs.

The Daily Mail and others will always find examples of this kind of behaviour, behaviour which we find abhorrent and want to stop. But this view we have of ‘them’ the so called underclass is only really true in anecdotes and is an amalgam of all the different things we feel this group is doing wrong.

This isn’t the true picture of ‘them’. Most work, sometimes two jobs for a minimum wage which doesn’t cover the cost of living, especially in London. The work they do is vital but undervalued, caring for our children and old people, serving us fast food or staffing our supermarkets. Of those who don’t work, many are ill, uneducated or so damaged by their own poor upbringing that they cannot, without a lot of help, be functioning employees or parents. And it is exactly this kind of help which is being cut in the government’s austerity drive.

As a group of people they are scorned, vilified, laughed at and worst of all, blamed for virtually every ill in society. Government rhetoric about cutting benefits and the austerity drive often suggests that they caused the problem and punishing them is part of the solution. It is hardly surprising that some of the reaction to this is explosive and violent. It is actually far more surprising that so many of ‘them’ continue to work hard, abide by the law and try to build a better life for themselves and their family when the odds are currently heavily stacked against them.

Social mobility in the UK is at a virtual standstill as the rest of us hog all the wealth and opportunity and refuse to let anyone else into our world.

It was us, the property-owning middle classes, and the banks and credit card companies who created the – in hindsight inevitable – credit crunch but we aren’t the people who are suffering the worst of the consequences. On top of the fact that we treat the underclass with contempt, refuse to allow them into our lives, shop in different shops, drink in different pubs, go on different holidays and pour scorn on them at every opportunity; we also demand that they are the ones who pay for the economic crisis that we created through reduced benefits, cuts in vital services and rising living costs which hit this group harder than any other.

None of this excuses or condones the individual acts of violence, theft and vandalism that have taken place over the last week but neither should we be entirely surprised by the group actions, the fact that the wisdom of this particular crowd decided to steal and burn our stuff, to attack our communities and basically to treat us with the same lack of respect which we show them.

——————————————————————————

Photo: hozinja