Channel 4 aired a new TV show this Monday, “Skint”. Rather than giving a balanced account of life in austerity Britain, the show’s real aim and message was very clear. It was another attempt to paint benefit recipients in a wholly negative light, as part of the campaign to justify the vicious Tory attacks on living standards. Callum Stanland from Grimsby – a neighbouring town to Scunthorpe, where filming took place – reviews the show.
Channel 4 aired a new TV show this Monday, “Skint”. Rather than giving a balanced account of life in austerity Britain, the show’s real aim and message was very clear. It was another attempt to paint benefit recipients in a wholly negative light, as part of the campaign to justify the vicious Tory attacks on living standards. Callum Stanland from Grimsby – a neighbouring town to Scunthorpe, where filming took place – reviews the show.
Channel 4 advertised “Skint” as an insight into the reality of the lives of those that have to live on benefits in a town where there are no jobs. Instead “Skint” offered up every right-wing stereotype of those living on benefits, reinforcing the class hatred of those that have never known the hardship of having to rely on the misery of the benefits system just to get by.
“Skint” is based on the stories of residents on the Westcliff estate in Scunthorpe. However, stories have emerged that residents were offered money to be filmed buying drugs. No air time was given to positive stories from the estate such as a young boy being taken on by the Royal Ballet.
If this documentary was to be believed, you would think that everybody living on Westcliff has large families, that no child on the estate ever went to school, and that if they did go to school they would soon end up suspended. In addition, the show made it seem as though everybody on the estate not only claims Jobseekers’ Allowance, but also makes more money through either selling stolen food to their neighbours at cheap prices, dealing drugs or prostitution.
Nobody can deny that 15-year-old Connor, featured in the show, threatening his mother just for trying to make him go to school was grotesque, nor should anyone condone smashing in someone’s windows just because their son has upset them; but to portray this as an everyday occurrence on the council estate is just as grotesque and a misrepresentation of daily life on the estate. The community ethos of Dean and his neighbours who fixed the window is much more common and reflective of life on the estate.
In Scunthorpe the steelworks is the main employer but has been in decline and has laid off 25,000 workers in recent years. These 25,000 good quality jobs with good pay and conditions have been replaced with (very few) service sector jobs, which are low-paid and have poor working conditions, and many of which are only part-time.
The situation in my home town of nearby Grimsby is similar, with the decline of the fishing industry. These jobs have been replaced with poorly paid agency work in fish factories and low paid service sector jobs like in Scunthorpe. A similar documentary called “Exposed: Driven from Home” about the estate where I live and grew up aired on ITV in November 2012 portrayed the residents of the Nunsthorpe Estate, especially the youths of the estate, in a similar light as druggies, hooligans and thugs terrorising local residents and forcing them from their homes.
Instead of highlighting what life is really like living on the estate, the producers of “Skint” and “Exposed: Driven from Home” decided to demonize the residents.
The cuts to local councils will mean that Sure Start centres, Youth Clubs and Community Centres, which provided some opportunity for the youth of council estates across the country to improve their community and provide them with somewhere to go, will be closed. The closure of these vital services will mean that more young people are enticed into a life of crime.
Skint is part of the right-wing media’s attempt to divide the working class, painting the youths and unemployed of council estates as evil and inhuman, telling the working class that it is not the fault of banks and the capitalist system for the ills of our society, but their neighbours and young people, who cannot find a job and have been left to rot on the scrapheap with no work available.
Just taking a look at some of the tweets on the #skint hashtag reveals the purpose of the documentary, with some taking to Twitter to call for residents of the estate to be sterilised or even some suggesting that residents of the Westcliff estate should be put in concentration camps. This comes days after new research revealed that benefit claimants are viewed as part of an “outgroup” that doesn’t feel the same emotions as everybody else. The aim of the documentary was to paint extreme examples of those who seem to be abusing the benefits system as the norm in order to justify their class hatred towards everyone who has to claim benefits and their view that people living on benefits are not quite human.
The truth is that council estates like Westcliff in Scunthorpe and the Nunsthorpe in Grimsby have a lot of problems, including drugs, crime and unemployment; but these are not just problems for these two council estates in Northern Lincolnshire but are problems that affect huge areas of our country.
These documentaries are not really about the residents of two council estates but are a demonisation of those who rely on benefits right across the country, including those who work in low-paid jobs that need their wages subsidised by the benefits system. This demonisation is not the answer to the problems of poverty and unemployment, and the scourge of drink and drugs in our communities.
We can achieve full employment, decent wages that don’t rely on food bought out of the back of a car or the local food bank, and good quality housing for all. The answer to the problems of the residents of the Westcliff estate and other council estates across the country is socialism. Labour should put forward a radical manifesto based on the socialist transformation of society through the nationalisation of the banks and insurance houses under democratic workers’ control and management, and planning the economy so we can achieve full employment, decent wages and a better standard of life for everyone. Only by doing this will we put an end to the poverty and hardship which causes the problems on council estates around the country and give the residents of the Westcliff estate hope for a better future.
