At last, a critical analysis from a human rights perspective

inheritance spans accumulated experience, intelligence, inventions, investments and hard work, together with environmental assets – energy, minerals, rivers, oceans, soil, flora and fauna and climate. We should never take for this for granted, ‘no one has the right to more of the earth’s resources … than the total of those resources divided by the world’s population’ (Sayer, 2016: 341).

The concept of the commons extends from what we take for granted in our everyday lives, like roads, waste disposal and public transport to the riches of the arts, past and present, to advances in science, past and present. Inequalities in the development of the commons privilege the powerful over the less powerful, often leading to slavery and exploitation. As a global phenomenon, neoliberal capitalism exploits poorer people within rich countries, making societies more and more unequal, at the same time as exploiting poorer countries, keeping countries unequal. The result is a divided world. These points certainly challenge any dialogue that centres on the ‘Because I deserve it’ narrative of individualism. ‘The commons are our collective heritage, our common wealth, our collective knowledge and our traditions of sharing in society’ (Standing, 2019: 349).

David Cameron claimed his ‘Big Society’ was about participatory democracy and community empowerment. This is not true! It was an exercise in making the poor responsible for their own poverty. Thatcher’s ‘care in the community’ and Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ need to be critiqued for ‘community engagement [being] used as an excuse for social dumping’ (Monbiot, 2017: 81). The small state simply absolved itself of responsibility for protecting democracy by ensuring fair distribution of resources, maintenance of human rights and a balance of power between the powerful and powerless, using ‘austerity’ as a smokescreen for robbing the poor to pay the rich, with dire consequences. This was the final dismantling of the values that informed the welfare state. Philip Alston revealed the shameful state of British poverty to the world, so let’s see what he had to say.

At last, a critical analysis from a human rights perspective!

Philip Alston, the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, came on a mission to investigate Austerity Britain in November 2018 and did not hold back on speaking truth to power.

A story of speaking truth to power …

Once upon a time in Austerity Britain a visitor from Australia spent a fortnight travelling round UK communities, listening very carefully to the stories people told about their everyday lives. He just happened to be not only a human rights lawyer, but the UN Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights. In the fifthrichest country in the world, he witnessed with his own eyes such extremes of

poverty and destitution … long queues for foodbanks, people sleeping rough on the streets, the sense of deep despair and hopelessness, loneliness and isolation … he was shocked! A situation so bad, a government minister for suicide has been appointed. Local authority budgets so dramatically cut by government policies that safety nets for poor communities have been destroyed, with libraries, youth and community centres, public spaces, parks and recreation centres closed or sold off … But worst of all are the cuts in social security and related policies that have targeted the poor, women, minority ethnic groups, children, single parents, asylum seekers and people with disabilities, violating human rights agreements in relation to women, children, disabled people and economic and human rights.

Alston was so shocked by all of this, he shamed UK poverty as a political choice, not an economic necessity, and accused the government of being out of touch with reality. Everyone with their eyes open can see the suffering, it’s all around you, and this could easily have been avoided had there been the political will. Just one player stubbornly refuses to see the situation for what it is, and that’s the government! For almost one in every two children to be poor in the fifth-richest country is not just a disgrace, it’s a social calamity and an economic disaster rolled into one! A government spokesperson said in response, he’s got it wrong, and so everything carried on just the same …

The UN Rapporteur’s remit is to investigate countries with the extremely high levels of deprivation associated with developing nations, but the US and Britain are ‘outlier nations on poverty and treatment of the poor’ (O’Hara, 2020: 9). Both use the neoliberal stigma narrative of ‘welfare scroungers’ to justify extreme inequalities, portraying the rich as hard-working and deserving and the poor as feckless, lazy and irresponsible wasters to justify radical changes in the value system, at variance with the common good. At the time of Philip Alston’s visit, the UK was in chaos with the all-consuming Brexit fervour that raged long and hard at the expense of any form of sensible government. Alston managed to penetrate the raging Brexit madness by speaking truth to power, naming and shaming UK poverty as a political choice. He accused the government of a ‘complete disconnect’ with the reality of the impact of poverty on people’s lives, saying, ‘Austerity could easily have spared the poor, if the political will had existed to do so.’ Alston’s 42-page report (Alston, 2018) was presented to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva with an accusation that austerity measures in the UK had violated UN human rights agreements in relation to women, children, disabled people, and economic and human rights. He critiqued government policies that have made deliberate choices to divert