Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Britain [Paperback]

"Not only should everybody with any conscience read it; it should be the manifesto for a third Labour term."

'A passionately reasoned and compelling account of the avoidable cruelties still embedded in the underside of British life - by a writer who has literally worn the clothes, lived in the flats and done the jobs of the poor. Every member of the cabinet should be required to read it, apologise and then act'. - Will Hutton. A frank and breathtaking book, this is journalist and broadcaster Polly Toynbee's account of her courageous intention to live and work on the minimum wage. The 'decent living' wage set by the Council of Europe is set at GBP7.39. The minimum wage in Britain is currently GBP4.10 per hour. And often, people are working for less, their voices unheard, their faces unnoticed. The low-paid are caught in an economic double bind that victimises them and shames the rest of us. Toynbee took whatever jobs she could find, often offered for less than the official minimum wage.Living on an estate in Clapham, she started from scratch and found that if she were truly unemployed, she would not even be able to afford a new job, and that faced with starvation, it's impossible not to sink into debt. In this powerful and compelling book, Polly Toynbee journeys to the inside of Britain today and uncovers that world which is invisible to most. This is a damning portrait of social justice in Britain.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist and broadcaster and was formerly the BBC?s social affairs editor. Previous books include Did Things Get Better? An Audit of the Labour Government (with David Walker), Hospital, Lost Children, The Way We live Now and A Working Life. She has won the National Press Awards and What the Papers Say columnist of the year. She lives in Lambeth and has four children.

Chapter 2 A Home
I chose to stay here on my own home turf to write this book because this is where best to draw a portrait of Social Justice in Britain. Poverty is not somewhere else, up North in Barrow or Jarrow, it is in the next street, intricately interwoven with wealth. It cleans the houses of the well-healed, it serves them in shops and restaurants it sweeps the streets and oils the works of all the public services they use. There is far less deep North/South or regional wealth-gap than the great social divide to be found within each area, everywhere, including right here on my doorstep, rich and poor living in the same postal sectors. In every big city rich and poor live cheek by jowl, close together yet far apart, managing to be almost unaware of each other in their parallel space. In places like Clapham the new conspicuous wealth of the last few years flaunts itself extravagantly in what remains London’s poorest borough. So that is why I stayed right here to explore the widening gap between top and bottom. In the course of writing I found myself crossing and re-crossing this social chasm, a culture shock each time I visited my family, my real home, my real life and then returned to this next-door yet foreign place where neighbours live.
Do I exaggerate? When I wonder if I over dramatise this great fissure in a society that likes to think of itself increasingly classless, I only have to tell friends or colleagues what I am doing and they are electrified, fascinated, full of questions, intrigued by how it feels, what it’s like, how my accent was received. If I had said I had just been up the Amazon alone in a dugout they would have been far less interested in my traveller’s tales. Sometimes I thought I was daring, in bed at night listening to footsteps and sounds on the staircase. Sometimes I thought this was all absurd since a third of the population live on housing estates and do low-paid jobs, so what’s new? But when I see people from my own world looks so astonished at the idea that one of us could for a while live like one of them, I know how wide the gap still is. Or I just think about the day I dropped back home from my cleaning job to find my own cleaner vacuuming my front room, which brings a laugh of wry recognition about the way we all live, we on the well-heeled left of centre, too.

Chapter 3 The Agency
I watched the other applicants. Most of them were foreign; many seemed to understand barely a word of English. All were desperate for work, as each of them approached the young man at the reception desk, many with a friend to speak for them in equally halting English. The young man asked them a perfunctory question or two and if they didn’t understand at all he sent them away, however hard they pleaded for work, but most were allowed to wait. Among this seething mass of labour were the eager, willing to take just about anything, and others with an air of weary resignation. In corners some were contorted with anxiety as they struggled with the sheaf of forms they had been given. As I looked on, the only strict rule that seemed to apply was that everyone must have a valid work permit or British citizenship before they even got a chance to fill out any forms. Immigration status was the one check that was rigorously carried out almost everywhere I went.

Chapter 4 Spending
To start with, I realised I had no idea what most things cost. For example, there was not a single light bulb in the place and it would be dark soon. I had always bought a bundle of them, dumping them into my shopping trolley with no thought about their price. That is how I always shop. I go to Sainsbury’s in Clapham High Street, park the car and fill it up with what I need. But I only have a hazy idea of what the total weekly bill usually comes to, about £100, I think, for myself and my family. But if I shop twice, it might be more, depending on family and social arrangements. I like to pretend to myself that I am not especially extravagant; I don’t buy outrageously expensive things like fillet steak or Dover soles (except as a treat). I like bargains, priding myself on sometimes finding items close to their sell-by-date with red Reduced stickers on them, which gives me an absurd sense of good housekeeping virtue. I often buy Three for the Price of Two and feel pleased with myself without bothering to check if they are in fact expensive products and not a bargain at all. Or whether I really want three. I like products with 200 Extra Reward Points, without bothering to check if their price is higher than the worth of the extra rewards. I do know the price of a litre of milk and a standard loaf of bread, but I only make sure I always know that because it is a low trick I have occasionally used on politicians if they criticise the poor. Ask a male politician for the price of three essentials and most haven’t got a clue: it leaves them blushing. Well I am blushing now, clueless about the cost of anything until I get down to the cheapest local cut-price supermarket, Lidi on Acre Lane. Used mainly by the hard-up, it is ten minutes walk from the estate and a bus ride back with the shopping.