In defence of Channel 4’s Benefits Street

Few subjects are more unfashionable than British poverty. And judging by the reaction to Channel 4’s brilliant documentary Benefits Street, it seems as if the left believe that it ought not to be discussed at all. This five-part series focuses on the inhabitants of James Turner Street in Birmingham, which has 99 houses, the majority of whose inhabitants are dependent on welfare. For two years, a TV crew let the camera roll and Ch4 now tells the story – giving a complex, uncomfortable view of what life is like at the bottom in Britain.

The left’s charge is that the wicked media is ‘demonising’ those on benefits, portraying them as scroungers – then claiming this represents everyone on welfare. This claim is impossible to reconcile with Benefits Street. I can only assume that the show’s critics (or the minority of them who actually watched it) see demons when they look at these people.