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NEU Senior Regional Support Officer
Women who know the poor challenge the politicians who don’t
BOB HOLMAN recommends a new report confronting some of the stereotypes about poverty by talking to those who are on the front line

In 1943, in the midst of war, eight women published a book about poverty called Our Towns: A Close-Up which became a best-seller. The war-time study stemmed from the evacuation of over a million mainly working-class people in 1939.

I was one of them. The evacuees drew many complaints in the mainly country places. They were dirty, flea-ridden, inadequately clothed and badly behaved. The evacuees were often poor, for which their lazy, incompetent parents were blamed. 

The Women’s Group on Public Welfare set up a committee of eight professional women to investigate the evacuation. Significantly, they all knew about poverty at first hand and deduced that it was poverty which led to the evacuees apparent deficiencies. They then went to the poor neighbourhoods and argued that society imposed poverty on the residents.

  • Our Lives: Challenging Attitudes to Poverty in 2015 is available free from ryantunnardbrown.com/publication.
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