Product Description

'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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #81376 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Independent on Sunday 16th February
"Not only should everybody with any conscience read it; it should be the manifesto for a third Labour term."

About the Author
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.

Excerpted from Hard Work: Life in Low-pay Briatin by Polly Toynbee. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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.

Customer Reviews

Compelling well written account of Life in Low Pay Britain
I've never been so moved to write a review before. The contents and sentiment of this book will stay with me for long after I've put it down. Toynbee is a middle-class journalist, living a comfortable life in a fashionable part of Clapham, not having to worry about how much her weekly shop at Sainsburys comes to. As Orwell before her, she trades this in temporarily, to experience life on the minimum wage - to see how the ignored one third of the UK live. It's a chilling tale - although Toynbee never resorts to shock tactics - her story is about the millions of respectable, working people who will never escape the trap of poverty - not the minority underclass who the media always target because they make for a more dramatic story - the drug addicts, neighbours from hell and teenage criminals.

This is remarkable honest, raw writing - Toynbee reveals a great deal about herself in this book - and this adds to its power. She is not a left-wing apologist - she confesses that she likes some aspects of globalisation - at least big businesses have minimum standards to adhere to, unlike small ones. She likes shopping for pleasure, and sees nothing wrong with consumerism (environmental damage aside). The main thrust of the book - that the minimum wage must be raised is argued rationally and sensibly throughout. She also points out that inequality is related to gender, class and race - it's the "women's" jobs that tend to be the lowest paid.

In addition - this is beautifully and thoughtfully written - some of Toynbee's phrases gave me goosebumps. As a working-class boy who worked in nursing homes to supplement his university grant - a lot of what she said resonated personally with me. Good on ya Polly!

Patronising
As someone who has spent a long time living in a family dependant on benefits, and having to suffer the social stigma of poverty and it's undignified nature, Polly Toynbee has written this book in order to inform others of the harshness of life at the bottom of the economic ladder, and I have a problem with it.

I work a low paid job at a supermarket, and my educational opportunities are limited and would like my voice to be heard, not a middle class person taking it upon themselves to speak for me. Yes, I do not doubt her sympathy, but that is not what many poor want; it is instead the chance to express their opnions and further their lives in a less oppressive way. Part of the problem is middle class dominance of politics, and it's reporting of it in a social context. Whatever happened to communication? Let the poor have the opportunity to speak for themselves, I am sure they would have alot to say, and it would be from a genuine perspective. Toynbee can immerse herself in it (poverty) but she is not of it.

Another thing is the negative life she imposes upon working class experience, rather than also focusing on the economic realities. I have many happy times being working class, times where myself and others have found ways to cope with our siuations in a positive way. It is not just grim estates and horrible landlords, and soul destroying work. Tell us something we don't know already. Of course she was going to find it tough, she comes from a more comfortable world, and her senses and feelings being in alien situations are going to be picking up experiences and their consequences in a more intense way. But to put it another way- yes it is good journalism, but from an unskilled, manual worker doing low paid work, and having experienced some of the things she describes in her book, it seems a bit ridiculous when someone plays at poverty for a bit in order to tell other people what it is like to live in poverty. Ask the poor themselves! We aren't stupid you know!

She goes on about the voicless and invisible. Well, she is contributing to that condition of being powerless and impotent politically.

True to life account
As somebody who unexpectedly found myself down and out in London from late 2001 to early 2002, I found this book complelling and true to life on the work element of the low waged poverty problem. The only caveat I have with the account is that many people rightly spot the work/welfare related causes but do not recognise that domestic causes are just as oppressive and difficult to overcome.

I was shocked to discover in London that not only is it difficult to come by even modestly paid work, the road to success is fraught with exploitative agencies, rouge employers, but also greedy private landlords and predatory moneylenders. While the book missed out on the harsh deal dealt out to those in private rented accomodation and under the scourge of door-to-door lenders (though the book does note one south London based hire purchase shop that mercilessly exploits vulnerable people on low incomes) the account of the employment based exploitation was hard hitting and accurate.

I liked the way the book talked to people face to face - for example the manager of the Care home, and the man from the DWP social fund. In fairness, the description of the Social Fund was much rosier than my experience of it.

Above all, the book points out the chilling fact that the situation is worsening. The lowest paid workers find it virtually impossible to obtain proper pay rises or greater rights, while the better off workers get huge pay hikes. Its a book that anybody involved in policy making or sociology should be forced to read.