How Labour is turning Britain into a land of paupers

If there was one reason above any other for the British electorate’s flight to socialism in 1945, it was surely the means test. In some ways the national government’s grudging state charity of the Depression years was worse than nothing. For his ha’p’orth of black pudding, the 1930s welfare claimant had first to surrender his dignity, his privacy and in some cases his home. A claimant for the dole or the old age pension had to submit to inspection by the means test man, who had the power to enter his home and order him to dispose of every last luxury before money would be paid. Tales circulated about pensioners ordered to sell dining chairs or pictures from their walls. In The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), George Orwell wrote of unemployed miners forced to evict their elderly bedridden parents from their homes because the means test man had ruled that they could not qualify for the dole so long as they had a lodger.