“Into the purse not the wallet” – the absolute necessity of universal child benefits

By Ruth Bailey-Davison

Family allowance days were treat days when I was child. Mum would pick us up from school for lunch and we’d have ‘half-lots’, a half-size portion of fish and chips at home before she’d walk us back to the school gates for afternoon lessons.

Much has changed since the early 70s. There are few stay-at-home mums these days and still fewer children go home for lunch. But one thing remains the same: the absolute necessity for universal child benefits.

Our family was far from wealthy; in fact my parents struggled when we were children. But it was a family on its way up. There were others in the street, seen through my childish eyes, who had made it: the family up the road whose children once had an entertainer for their birthday party, our next door neighbours who went on holidays to places other than relatives’ homes. And then there was the family round the corner who had cocktail parties, had a plastic pool in the garden you could actually swim in and an onyx telephone table in the hall. But even as a child I knew there was something wrong in that house. And that something wrong, it later transpired, was the flying fists and feet when the cocktail parties were over. Madeleine (not her real name) was hospitalised more than half-a-dozen times before she left Frank (nor his, though heaven knows he deserves to be shamed). It was family allowance, or child benefit as it’s now know, said Madeleine, that kept her and her three children alive – she didn’t work and Frank gave her no money. Remember, this is a benefit which from its start has been paid “into the purse not the wallet”, or direct to the mother.

Those well off parents and politicians – some members of a Labour government – who have queued up in recent days to argue that it’s senseless that such a benefit be paid to them are clearly blessed in many ways. Their lives, it seems, are lives not only where £20, £40 or £60 a week makes no difference, but lives untouched by unequal gender dynamics – places where abuse and abuse of power have no place. Genuinely, I’m pleased for them.

But it is not the same for all women and domestic violence unfortunately didn’t die in the 70s. This is a benefit that all true socialists and feminists should fight to preserve. It may have bought me fish and chips, but for Madeleine, her children and families like them up and down the country, of whatever class, it buys them succour. We forget this at our peril.