“Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws…THE RICH AND THE POOR.”
Benjamin Disraeli, 1845
Disraeli said that in 1845, at about the same time that Charles Dickens was writing The Adventures of Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol. Those two books endure probably more than any other English novels, and you know the stories even if you never read them, because they both became famous films. We all know about “please sir can I have some more”, and Scrooge, the main character in Christmas Carol, has entered the lexicon as a description of a certain kind of person.
We celebrate Dickens especially next month because it will be two hundred years since his birth, and because he spent his boyhood years in Chatham, Kent in the UK. There is a Dickens Society in C-K.
Dickens had a huge influence on the world, because he made us think about poverty and Christmas, so much so that Disraeli, a conservative with a conscience, tried to form an alliance with the working poor against the rich industrialists.
By the time the 1960′s came around, the idea of a division between the rich and the poor had largely disappeared. All over the western world there was full employment, the dirty thirties were a distant memory, there was a new car in every driveway, flower power was the new power, people were dropping out, and expecting that the world owed them a living. In both Chathams.
And now it has all gone wrong, and we have the OWS movement, and the rich and the poor are “inhabitants of different planets” again, and there is no work, at least not without a trade, or an education, or unless you find your niche in self employment, and right now it looks as though those halcyon days are gone for ever. And anyway we cannot find people from Canada who will do the back breaking work that field work requires and we have to bring in people who will do it.
What went wrong?
I know we exported out jobs to the third world, but I can remember when that was going to be a good thing, when we were going to raise the standard of living to the same as ours for every person on this planet. Well we did to a certain extent. We have one sixth of the worlds population in China who are becoming consumers, the same thing is happening in other corners of the world. It is possible to foresee the day in the fairly short term when that great disruption will have worked its way through, and we will all be better off.
But something else happened along the way. We lost the sense of family, the sense of community, the sense of self reliance, and doing what was best for our tribe, When did it become acceptable for some people to think that the government will provide?
I am very much a modern man, in that I don’t think that children should go hungry. I think Churchill was right when sixty years ago he said that “there is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies”. I think that everyone should have a roof over their head, but I also think that it is the parents responsibility to do that, and it only becomes the governments responsibility when all else has failed. I don’t think everyone thinks that way any more.
This past week we had a ships Captain abandon his ship when there were still passengers, women and children, crew, on board. Whatever happened to honour?
What went wrong?
