BEYOND MARSH FEN AND TOWN AND CLASS - WHERE WE ARE TODAY

We now have a burden that was originally born by working class that is now being spread to the middle classes - the affordability of being a family or a household.

The Romans believed it was a state duty to provide food and circuses. To this end Lex Frumentaria set up a grain dole system to provide grain in times of shortage to those that could not afford it. This recognised that in times of shortage hunger and starvation is caused by the affordability of food more than its availability. 

In a modern industrial society it is a duty of government to ensure the affordability of the family and household unit. In practice this means available adequate paid employment, affordable housing, food, energy and water.

To understand this, a family unit is typically two people often raising children, sometimes refered to as the nuclear family. As such it is a biological unit. A household unit is different in that it is an economic unit. It can be the same as a family unit, or it can be extended family, friends or associates sharing the same house.

If the family unit is under pressure it can endure by sharing facilities in a larger household. These two units are the core of our society. You see this in many notable forms: farming families with succession over generations; industrial working class families successively  following each other through generations into the same employment, such as minin, textile workers, or food processing, packing and distribution. It was not unusual to see whole families working for Geest in Spalding, or all the men from an extended family mining the same pit; or  a whole family of farm workers in tied housing working either full time or seasonally for the same farming business. 

When affordability is under pressure you see larger households, often overcrowded. This may be extended families. They need not be related in the case of gang workers, students or singletons living in a City house sharing outside of relationships is common and such arrangements provide resilience.

It only takes two people to produce children, but on average two people by themselves cannot afford to buy or rent shelter for them. This was tolerated more when it applied more to the working classes through deindustrialisation, but now it has ensnared the middle classes. This is even worse in that the affordability of basic living is now hitting the larger,  more resilient household units.

Many renters and homeowners alike scrape by, when weekly income runs out sooner than the days of the week, by using charitable food banks and by borrowing either food or money from family and friends. Necessary household expenses tend to grow, and not merely because of inflation but because qualitative changes have occurred in what is constituted necessary expenses.

But what is worse is that when you look at the current situation it was avoidable with the following key errors:

Housing has been put under pressure by inadequate building of affordable homes coupled with no successive effective action to prevent massive population growth through migration.

Energy has successively had little meaningful and effective investment to allow for demand increase and decommissioning of coal and old nuclear since Harold Wilson's government. Perhaps the worst example were the millions wasted paying a French company to build nuclear power that never happened under Tony Blair, with subsequent governments no better. Of course Margaret Thatcher was an early exponent of action against climate change and started a massively erroneous and unjust transition following the miners strike by closing the bulk of that industry down in an irresponsibly short period. 

Water has been a massive success for shareholders as an investment, but a failure for the population. Problems by a growing population have Bern forecast for over 50 years. In Eastern England we saw Rutland Water provide some resilience over fifty years ago. Current plans for new reservoirs by 2050 are too lae by 70 years. The same goes for supply and drainage  infrastructure.

 We need to see actions equivalent to the town improvements of the 1880s or the post war rebuilding program of the late 1940's. There appears to be no meaningful will for this from either government or business. Rather we see intellectual and ideological arguments from politicians and business leaders alike. 

The one area of consistent success, although this is denied and portrayed popularly as the opposite, has been the supply of adequate and cheap food. Rather than acknowledge this success we see great publicity about food poverty, but this is highly misleading. The simple truth is that if food is not affordable to a household it is due to the high cost of housing, energy and water combined with inadequate income. It is not because cheap food is not available, because it is. However, as we enter into a more contentious world we need to protect this key aspect and build in resilience by valuing our own production. 

Finally is the deficit of adequately paid employment. In the Fens there is still an abundance of jobs. But we continually see a race to the bottom in pay of  food industry jobs that I have described elsewhere. At the same time in my current area, Northumberland, I despair to see the dominance of gentrification and hospitality and tourism heralded as primary opportunities. The reality is the tourist industry is very good at supplying low paid, seasonal jobs with uncertain hours. I see very little heralding of manufacturing and when large announcements are made for the region they are frequently let down with lack of actual delivery. In the meantime the cushioned gentrified classes increasingly dominate.

It is of note that it is only as middle class people in what would be regarded as highly paid jobs ate being hit that the focus on the family and household units not being affordable is being highlighted despite this being the reality of many working people for a prolonged period. We should learn that the fate of the more vulnerable in society is an early warning to the rest of us.