New Statesman

ANTHONY FREDAW 30 | NEW STATESMAN | 6-12 JULY 2018 THE NS ESSAY Peak inequality The gap between the very rich and the rest is wider in Britain than in any other large country in Europe, and society is the most unequal it has been since shortly after the First World War. But is great change coming? By Danny Dorling here are many ways in which photocopier works, or who keep the com- Sweden is half as likely to die in childhood inequality can be felt and in- puter servers working night and day. as a child born today in the UK. There are numerable ways in which it can We live in times of peak inequality. It no causes of death among children that are be measured. However, it is an- pervades almost every aspect of our lives in significantly more frequent in Sweden than nual income that trumps all other Britain in ways that we now accept as nor- in the UK. By 2015 the UK ranked 19th out Tmeasures, because it is income that gives mal. Like goldfish in a bowl of dirty water of 28 in the European league table of neo- us respect and the freedom to do every- we have adapted to think that our tank is natal mortality: deaths within the first 28 thing from buying a bus ticket to securing a normal. But it isn’t. days of life. In 1990 we had ranked seventh. mortgage. We can only live how we live by Among all European nations we have be- Bulgaria ranks 27th and Romania 28th, but dint of the income we receive. come the most inequitably rewarded – we infant mortality in both is falling. Since 2015 Income inequality in the UK is higher are swimming in the dirtiest of fish tanks. we have seen a statistically significant rise than in any other European country, except The transition to this state of affairs came in infant mortality across Britain: no other occasionally one of the Baltic states (during slowly. In the 1970s we were living in the state in Europe has experienced that. And a bad year for them). All other European Un- second-cleanest large tank of all in Europe; this is despite, not because of immigration. ion countries enjoy greater income equality. only Sweden’s was cleaner. I say “clean” be- Immigrants, who are on average younger Because of this their citizens are freer to live cause as yet there is no evidence of any harm and healthier, are essential for the running where they wish, to mix equally, to go to coming from high levels of equality – once a of our health services. Their presence has school with each other rather than segregate basic level of affluent subsistence has been prevented overall life expectancy from fall- their children, as the majority of parents in achieved, there is no downside to being ing across the UK – though it is already now the top 10 per cent of income distribution in more economically equal. falling for many groups in many parts of the Britain feel compelled to do. Nowhere are the repercussions of living country. In everywhere else in Europe life Peak inequality is when the town you live with gross inequality more evident than in expectancy is rising faster than in the UK (it in is so segregated that the school-aged chil- health. The physical health inequalities that is rising fastest in Norway and Finland). Un- dren do not mix – not between schools, not come with tolerating the highest income in- til 2015 the UK had not experienced growth socially, not at all. Peak inequality is where equalities in Europe are not as extreme as the in numbers of grieving parents since during the best-off people in your workplace de- damage to our mental health (as document- the Second World War – when infant mor- mand “housing allowances” because they ed in Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s tality last rose for two years in a row. could not possibly live near those who clean new book The Inner Level), but they are After a time the statistics begin to turn their workplace, or those who ensure the still shocking. For instance, a child born in you numb. You become used to bad news. t 6-12 JULY 2018 | NEW STATESMAN | 31 t Year after year the number of children the equality that was coming. They re- punish the miners who had been on strike. waking up in shabby temporary accommo- sented the good-quality comprehensive The southerners did not triumph until dation rises. It now does so with each pass- schools that began emerging in that decade; Thatcher’s election in 1979 – but they had ing Christmas Day. A record 130,000 chil- the decent housing; the full employment begun their fight in the autumn of 1974. dren were living in bed and breakfasts over that allowed people to tell their boss where The British establishment had almost no Christmas 2017. to stick it; the growing lack of deference for idea of how economically reliant it was on You become used to hearing that ever the old rich, from the publication of books the empire. Almost all leading Conserva- greater numbers have recourse to food that a man would never wish his wife or his tives, most Liberals and a significant section banks (1.3 million parcels were given out servants to read (Lady Chatterley’s Lover in of the Labour Party had come to believe that in the year to April 2018), to such an extent 1960) through to “God save the Queen/ running the empire was the white man’s that you almost forget that as recently as the The fascist regime” (the Sex Pistols, 1977) – burden, a great sacrifice – something they 1990s there were no food banks in Britain. by which time it was too late. The political did at a loss even. There was no need for them, before inequal- shift towards greater inequality had been The pound had been falling in value ity reached its new peak – just as there was made in 1974. against the dollar since at least around a time when the soup kitchens of the 1930s The swing of votes towards the Tories in 1910. By the 1960s Conservative politicians all disappeared once equality rose high the second general election of that year was blamed immigrants from the Caribbean, and then the trade unionists at home. They blamed the miners in the early 1970s and We were so equal by the 1970s that then the few socialists in government during that decade. Britain joined the European we were most similar to Sweden – we Economic Community in 1973 in search of a solution to its economic woes. At no point, could have been Scandinavian ever, did the British contemplate how the centres of all former empires, from Otto- man to Hapsburg, from Rome to Lisbon, enough. When the income share of the bot- abrupt: Harold Wilson’s Labour Party won had suffered in the immediate aftermath of tom 90 per cent is used as the comparator, but with an overall majority of only three the loss of empire. today our levels of inequality are the same seats. In 1975 the Conservative party itself Soon the British became used to inequal- as in 1930. That is why the soup kitchens took an abrupt jump to the right with the ity rising with each year of Mrs Thatcher’s and feelings of hopelessness have returned. selection of Margaret Thatcher as its new government, before stuttering during John leader. In 1976 Jim Callaghan gave a speech Major’s rule (1992-1997) and rising sharply ow did we get here? What at Ruskin College, Oxford, that showed the again under Tony Blair’s New Labour. went wrong? Equality for the tone within Labour was changing, too. We reached an inequality high point in bottom 90 per cent peaked in This did not happen because of the 2007 when the bottom 90 per cent only 1978 when they took home oil crisis, Nixon abandoning the Bretton took home 57.4 per cent of all income, the 72.2 per cent of all the income Woods monetary system, or any other in- least they had taken since, tellingly, 1929, Hthere was to take that year. This high point ternational event outside the UK’s control. the year of the Wall Street crash that began had followed us reaching a slightly smaller It happened because of a very British prob- the Great Depression. (and almost always ignored) peak of 71.5 per lem. Britain differed fundamentally from Tony Blair was the king of income in- cent in 1968. Between those two dates we other countries in Europe in the 1960s and equality. No British prime minister since stumbled along a ridge of high equality and 1970s because its wealth had been built on Stanley Baldwin had seen the bottom 90 we could have chosen to go even higher. In a huge empire. And now the loss of our em- per cent take so little as they did under New hindsight, it is far easier to see. At the time, pire meant we were forced to get used to Labour. Under Gordon Brown the share of no one in Britain had a clear idea of just having less. the bottom 90 per cent rose slightly but so what a momentous period the late 1960s In October 1974 the south of England ef- did the share of the wealthiest 0.1 per cent. and early 1970s were. fectively voted to abandon the north of Eng- During David Cameron’s coalition govern- We could have followed the paths later land and the rest of the British Isles and to ment inequalities rose again, but not to the taken by the Netherlands, or France, or heights of the Blair era.

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