ABSTRACT
The Labour government which came to power in Britain in 1997 after 18 years of Conservative rule declared itself committed to fighting an evil with a new name, ‘social exclusion’. Whereas previous Labour governments might have railed against the poverty created by their Conservative predecessors, the Blair government framed the issue in a new way. To be sure, the government sometimes refers to poverty in the traditional sense, that is, a low income compared to the national average, and has introduced a number of measures to increase the income to certain groups. But, borrowing a term first used by the EU, its preferred concept is social exclusion. This concept frames the problem in a particular way, as one of integration of a distinct population into mainstream society. There is a new underclass which has become detached from normal social life. It is this detachment which accounts for their poverty; these problems cannot be overcome without a transformation in the form of life of the socially excluded. The political task, then, is to draw this underclass into the mainstream. The central element of this normalisation is waged employment; but it also involves the excluded changing their family life, public behaviours, community participation, attitudes to the self, and involvement in politics-in short, a cultural as well as an economic transformation.
