Benefits Britain 1949

Benefits claimants volunteer to live by the rules of the first year of the welfare state, to examine how our safety net should work.

Everyone’s got an opinion about the welfare state, whether we’re bemoaning ‘scroungers’ or pointing out how it’s failed the vulnerable, but there’s no consensus on how it can be fixed.

In this bold piece of living history, current benefits claimants volunteer to live for a week by the rules of 1949 to explore how our safety net should work.

Craig, who’s 24, finds that being born with spina bifida doesn’t entitle him to any benefits under the 1949 rules. But the post-war welfare state has another solution: it offers him training and work experience, and it has the power to force employers to take on workers with disabilities.

Craig has applied for hundreds of jobs in the past four years without success. Will his 1949 work experience at a call centre be a turning point?

Melvyn, who’s 71, hands over his 2013 pension, only to find that in 1949 he receives just £38.48 (the precise sum he’d have got then, adjusted for inflation). From this, he has to cover his food, bills and transport for the week.

Initially he appears to be coping well, but is soon plunged into debt and is forced to pawn his grandfather’s watch. What would the 1949 system have done with a pensioner who was failing to cope?

Karen, who’s 54, is on sickness benefit. Having worked all her life, she feels she should be entitled to greater support, rather than the government trying to take away more of her benefits.

2013 has judged her eligible for state aid, but will 1949 take as sympathetic a view of her conditions?

Comment.

It is hard to find a more irrelevant comparison than between welfare in 2013 and 1949.

Have we just fought a world war?

Is rationing still around?

Has Britain recently been “bankrupt” (as it was described in 1946)

Has Britain just had to negotiate a massive loan with the US ?

What will we learn?

Here’s some guesses.

The welfare state in 1949 had not managed to completely abolish all the hard conditions for benefits set down during the 1920s and 1930s.

There was plenty of moralising around.

People were generally much poorer, worse fed, and very many were poorly housed – not to mention bombed out.

They did not get a great deal of help, beyond the minimum.

No doubt some viewers will thrill to see the out-of-work and other claimants get treated strictly.

There will be gleeful remarks about “they ought to bring back some of those rules!”

This programme looks like another feast of poverty porn - joining the worthless We All Pay Your Benefits and the John Humprys on the Future of Welfare.

Shame on Channel Four!