Pauperland: Poverty
and the Poor in Britain
by Jeremy Seabrook
(Hurst, £9.99)

JEREMY SEABROOK has always been an eloquent advocate for the poor and deprived and a keen observer of society’s failings.

But this latest offering disappoints. “This book reflects on poverty and poor people. It looks at constancy and change and how people experience want…” Seabrook states in his introduction.

And that is exactly what it is — a reflection but little else.

The author seems to be looking at poverty in a philosophically meditative way, avoiding true engagement or passion and one wonders for whom the book has been written.

Seabrook raises interesting and apposite questions about the history of poverty and why it has always been with us and still is.

With our glut of wealth and material abundance why are there still so many poor people in Britain?

In the distant past, Seabrook contends, poverty was largely accepted by the masses because everyone around them, apart from the few owners of production and land, was also poor — it was considered a natural state.

Yet today, with global media, advertising and instant knowledge the poor can see that others are living affluent lives and wonder why they are still being forced to live in poverty.

Seabrook also points out that poverty in a close-knit or cohesive community is easier to bear than a poverty that is individualised and where the poor easily become isolated and ostracised.

He also raises the issue of a different kind of impoverishment — a cultural and social one brought about in the 19th century by the industrial revolution which continues to this day. Industrial expansion was extremely destructive of traditional rural cultures but brought economic improvement.

Yet the people weren’t asked whether they wanted this transformation and the same applies today with deindustrialisation and the destruction of those urban communities built up in the 19th century. “These were abolished,” Seabrook writes, “with the same indifference towards those who laboured in them, with which they had been established in the first place.” Again, no-one was consulted about a change imposed from above.

Seabrook writes in a refined language that could appear elitist or indeed patronising and is inappropriate in dealing with such subject matter.

Though an interesting, if discursive, contemplation it is hardly earth-shaking in offering radically new ideas.

Review by John Green