And not only do we find the story here being ruthlessly exploited to sell sensational headlines, but glance around and it's there being used to promote myths about a particular underclass - single mothers and benefits claimants - in order to soften the reception of certain harsh welfare reforms
In the last fortnight, James Purnell unbelievably held her story aloft in support of his initiative to force single mothers on benefits into work. Simultaneously, we read Cameron using her to vent his black tory heart in the secure, sensationalist conservative womb of the Daily Mail. It's okay now Dave, you're safe here. Say what you like. Here's some choice prose:
'if only this were a one-off story' - translates as 'if this doesn't merit an excuse to make crude generalizations, what does?'
'Children whose toys are dad’s discarded drink bottles; whose role models are criminals, liars and layabouts; whose innocence is lost before their first milk tooth' My god, it's like the beginning of a fairy tale. When will a smug Eaton tory twat arrive on his shining horse to save us all?
The phrase 'broken Britain' (or variant 'broken society') has appeared, at a glance, around 20 times in the mail in the last few months. A good solid handful of those references can be attributed to Cameron, as he busily casts himself as the saviour of this engulfing dystopian fantasy. To quote one columnist in the full heat of moralistic self righteous ecstasy 'if this isn't a broken society, what is?' And what exactly is a broken society? Other than a vague, one size fits all term parodied by Chris Morris in the Brass Eye episode 'moral decline', designed ease confusion by doing away with detail.
It's tempting, only too tempting, whilst skimming through such manipulative gutter journalism to spend a couple of seconds making dismissive noises and have done with. Particularly when the neon-blindingly cynical wooing of a convenient symbol of the popular masses such as the mail by a slimy toff seems too open and shut even to bother with. But the persistent murmur of broken Britain isn't just a top down imposed narrative. It more cloyingly rises up the social ladder like damp in a way that's much harder to pin down or critique, emanating from such a confusing multitude. Certain obscured hand- wringers occasionally crop up and warn liberals that by ignoring the real and valid concerns of the working class, they're forcing them to join the BNP. While this remains a distasteful ploy for the forcing of the anti immigration agenda into the mainstream, and an unrealistic reduction of a vast and nebulous social group (the 'working class') a central point can be extracted. We can't dismiss popular unease - we can reject it's colonisation by the conservatives.
It isn't just the generalization of certain characters that gives rise to murky neurotic worlds of fiction such as the world of 'Broken Britain', it's the construction of the characters themselves. The face of Karen Matthews hasn't just been copied and pasted onto the face of every single mother in the country - it's also been read, distanced and de-humanized. And that's the dark centre of the broken Britain myth - a process of Othering that demonises and divides, and gives people something to struggle and define their morally superior selves against. An alien underclass, among us, but not like us. There's a parallel to be made with the character assassination of women who report being raped, particularly if the claim happens to be made against, plucking a random example from the very air, a footballer. In an analysis of attitudes of authority figures to individuals reporting rape, feminist academic Liz Kelly contends that 'practitioners draw more on the safety of cliches and long held beliefs than on evidence'. The ghost of the lying harpy walks abroad, imposing herself on every single woman who dares to lodge an accusation. She's the Karen Matthews of the rape world. But does she exist? Does it matter? She embodies a certain distancing attitude of people towards people. It's not just that one woman is being generalized onto many - this in itself doesn't lead to unjust policy making. It's that, in terms of understanding, a superficial and un-nuanced portrait of a woman is being generalized onto many.
So how should we refute these crude fictions? As a starting point, we shouldn't confuse, as Polly Toynbee seems to when she contends that majority of single mothers are in employment, fact with ideology. A significant proportion of single mothers are unemployed. Just because this particular fact operates at the heart of an ideology designed to alienate and punish the less fortunate, doesn't mean it should be abandoned to the dark side. We can't ignore this just because it makes it easier for Purnell et al. to cut back on the carrots and get out the big stick. As satisfying as it is to be able to say, actually, most single mothers have one child and are over 35 (true), we risk getting into an endless cycle of trading and manipulating stats. We should not allow ourselves to become distracted from refuting the subtext of this mythological character construction, or its implicit contention that victims of social deprivation are somehow lesser beings.
