Framing the Philpotts: 2014 Anti-Welfarism Andlayout the British Newspaper Reporting of the Derby House Ltd Fire Verdictproof
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MCP 10 (1) pp. 79–94 Intellect Limited 2014 International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics Volume 10 Number 1 © 2014 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/macp.10.1.79_1 stephen harper University of Portsmouth Framing the philpotts: 2014 anti-welfarism andLayout the British newspaper reporting of the derby house Ltd fire verdictProof aBstract Keywords 1. This article analyses the newspaper reporting of the Mick Philpott manslaughter anti-welfarism 2. verdictFirst of 2013. Philpott is an unemployed British man who in May 2012 set fire benefits system 3. to his house, accidentally killingIntellect six children. This article argues that the Philpott ideology 4. verdict provided a valuable propaganda opportunity for British politicians and Mick Philpott 5. elements of the British media to link the crime to ‘welfare reform’ at a time when the newspapers 6. coalition government@ had begun to target welfare benefits for cuts. In particular, it propaganda 7. is argued that the demonization of Philpott as a member of the white British under- United Kingdom 8. class converged with an intensification of conservative and anti-welfarist arguments 9. about the United Kingdom’s benefits system, reviving and reinforcing the Victorian 10. concept of the ‘undeserving poor’ and the related notion that benefits are a reward 11. for good behaviour rather than a right. Examining articles from national newspapers 12. published in the days following the announcement of a guilty verdict in the trial, this 13. article analyses the discursive framing of the stories in order to discover what kind 14. of ideological messages were at work in the reporting of the Philpott verdict and 79 MCP_10.1_Harper_79-94.indd 79 5/12/14 1:58:53 PM Stephen Harper what sorts of differences existed between these messages. The article concludes with 1. an attempt to set this analysis in a wider socio-political context, considering how 2. the press’s perspectives on the story relate to the ideological (re)framing of public 3. discussion about welfare ‘benefits’ and claimants in the United Kingdom today. 4. 5. 6. IntroductIon 7. 8. This article analyses the newspaper reporting of the Mick Philpott 9. manslaughter verdict of 2013. Philpott is a British man who in May 2012 10. set fire to his house, accidentally killing his children. He had planned to 11. ‘rescue’ the children from the fire, painting himself as a hero and blaming 12. the fire on his former partner, Lisa Willis, who had lived with Philpott and 13. his wife Mairead in a ménage-a-trois until she left the household in 2012, 14. much to Philpott’s annoyance. Had his plan succeeded, Philpott could have 15. gained custody of Lisa’s children and thereafter accessed increased social 16. security payments. Mairead Philpott and a family friend, Paul Mosley, had 17. known about Philpott’s scheme. In the days and weeks following the tragedy, 18. however, all three individuals maintained the pretence that they were inno- 19. cent of the crime, although police had apparently suspected their involvement 20. from the outset. After a high-profile court trial, Philpott, along with Mairead 21. and Mosley, was found guilty of manslaughter and given a prison sentence 22. on 3 April 2013. Many reports about Mick Philpott’s history of2014 brutality and 23. sexual violence towards women began to emerge after the trial ended and 24. legal restrictions on reporting wereLayout lifted. 25. The Philpott story was phenomenally newsworthy, containing many of 26. British journalism’s core ‘news values’, including drama, novelty and titillation 27. (Chibnall 1977). The Philpotts’ indulgence in drug-taking, ‘dogging’ and 28. polyamory, in particular, made their story highLtd priority for a British tabloid 29. press ever eager to report tales of sexual irregularity (Conboy 2005: 123–51). 30. The identities of the dramatis personae added to the story’s newsworthiness. 31. As Pritchard and Hughes (1997: 49) have argued in relation to the US context, 32. homicides are more likely to be reported by journalists when ‘Whites are 33. suspects orProof victims, males are suspects, and victims are females, children 34. or senior citizens’, all of which pertained in this case, while murders of 35. women are considered more ‘deviant’ than murders of men and hence more 36. deserving of attention (1997: 53). Perhaps the most scandalous aspect of the 37. Philpott story, however, was the performance of Philpott and his wife at a 38. press conference following the fire, in which the couple had pretended to be 39. the victims of an arsonist. As Chermak (1995: 2) notes, ‘the newsworthiness 40. Firstof […] crime Intellect increases significantly if members of the family weep on camera, 41. provide a descriptive photograph, or express their pain dramatically in words’. 42. The Philpotts certainly did this; but after the trial, it became clear that the 43. couple’s expressions of grief, if not cynically acted out for the cameras, had 44. been@ masking their responsibility for their children’s deaths. Little wonder, 45. perhaps, that the Philpotts – and Mick, in particular – became publically 46. hated figures. 47. But there was another factor that contributed to Mick Philpott’s notoriety. 48. By the time of the house fire trial, Philpott was already a minor televi- 49. sion celebrity – or perhaps anti-celebrity – in the United Kingdom. His large 50. number of children (Philpott had fathered seventeen children by 2013) and 51. his unusual lifestyle (sharing a house with his wife and a girlfriend), as well 52. 80 MCP_10.1_Harper_79-94.indd 80 5/12/14 1:58:53 PM Framing the Philpotts 1. 1. as his 2006 request for a larger council house for his then eleven children, 2. 2. earned him appearances on several ITV television programmes, including the 3. 3. talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show, the breakfast programme This Morning, and 4. 4. a 2007 documentary fronted by the Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe enti- 5. 5. tled Ann Widdecombe Versus the Benefits Culture. In each of these appearances, 6. 6. Philpott was quizzed by the presenters about his ‘irresponsible’ lifestyle. Long 7. 7. before he was found guilty of manslaughter, therefore, Philpott had become 8. 8. emblematic of the feckless British ‘benefits scrounger’, one who ‘contributes’ 9. 9. nothing to ‘the economy’ and takes resources from hard-working, taxpay- 10. 10. ing others. For the right-wing journalist Amanda Platell (2006: 17) – one of 11. 11. Philpott’s most dedicated scourges – Philpott represented a ‘growing underclass 12. 12. of rootless, hopeless, white working-class boys who are causing ever-growing 13. 13. problems in Britain today’. In sociological terms, Philpott thus came precoded 14. 14. as a ‘folk devil’ (Cohen 1972), or – in Imogen Tyler’s (2012) more recent coin- 15. 15. age – a ‘national abject’ to rival the illegal immigrant, the ‘chav’ and the gypsy. 16. 16. As Chris Haylett (2001: 355) notes, ‘welfare is a divisive apparatus, made 17. 17. so by its political caretakers’. The figure of the ‘benefits scrounger’ has long 18. 18. been a staple of British political and media discourse. Writing in The Road 19. 19. to Wigan Pier in 1937, George Orwell (quoted in Jones 2012: 13) lamented 20. 20. that ‘the notion that the working class have been absurdly pampered, hope- 21. 21. lessly demoralized by doles, old-age pensions, free education, etc. […] is still 22. 22. widely held’. The virulence of these cultural images of the scrounger arguably 23. 23. lessened in the middle years of the twentieth century; but in the 1970s, scare2014 24. 24. stories about scroungers began to assume an increasingly central role in polit- 25. 25. ical discourse (Deacon 1978). In the late 1970s, Layoutas Thatcherism sought to roll 26. 26. back the welfare state, Stuart Hall et al. (1979: 17) argued that the figure of the 27. 27. ‘welfare “scavenger”’ was being rehabilitated in the British cultural imaginary 28. 28. as part of a bid to enforce an anti-collectivist ‘common sense’; this had the 29. 29. effect of creating a ‘moral panic’ around supposed welfare Ltdabuses (Golding 30. 30. and Middleton 1982). Since this period, the figure of the ‘celebrity scrounger’ 31. 31. or ‘super-scrounger’ has become a familiar one. Writing in the late 1990s, 32. 32. Peter Golding (1999: 149) noted that the ‘pig farmer and invalidity beneficiary’ 33. 33. Paul Booth became a figureProof of hatred in the British press in 1998; in terms 34. 34. that anticipate the media coverage of Mick Philpott, Booth was lacerated in 35. 35. The Sun as an example of ‘layabouts who do nothing but breed’. 36. 36. These divisive discourses recrudesced in the UK after the election of 37. 37. Conservative-Liberal Democrat government in 2010. The new government’s 38. 38. proposals to cut back on social welfare – part of a panoply of measures, 39. 39. including the introduction of a controversial ‘workfare’ scheme, designed to 40. 40. reduceFirst a substantial deficit Intellect– were accompanied by numerous statements from 41. 41. Conservative Party politicians that raised questions about the genuineness of 42. 42. many benefit claims. As Kayleigh Garthwaite (2011: 370) notes in relation to 43. 43. official pronouncements about Incapacity Benefit (IB): 44. 44. @ 45. 45. When discussing the latest proposals, Department for Work and 46. 46. Pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith recently claimed that ‘most 47. 47. people in Britain are honest, straight, hardworking’. Therefore, the 48. 48. underlying suggestion is that there are people receiving benefits who 49. 49. are in fact the opposite: dishonest, dodgy, and workshy. Indeed, David 50. 50. Cameron stated that if people ‘really cannot work’, then they will be 51.