My wife was 19 when she had our son – does that make her immoral, Mr Harris?

By Julian Ware-Lane

Tom Harris posted a thought-provoking article on LabourList recently and I thought I would add my two pennyworths.

I would agree that there is an issue as regards to welfare dependency, but I would warn about rushing to judgement. As you will find if you going knocking door-to-door, everyone has a story and appearances can be deceptive.

Tom begins his post with a tale about a young mother but makes no mention of any effort by him to find out the true story. He has jumped to conclusions that might be right – but he might also be horribly wrong.

I give some examples from my own life.

I was 23 when I got married; my wife was 18. About nineteen months later, my son was born; my wife by then was 19, a teenage mum. Not long ago we celebrated our twenty-sixth wedding anniversary. I have no idea how old we looked at the time, but had there been a Tom Harris in that ward 24 years ago who knows what he would have been thinking.

I left school at 16, straight into work as a civil servant with HM Customs and Excise. I left some twelve years later to become an IT consultant. Being in education and being educated are not necessarily the same thing.

Tom also makes comment about morality. My wife is a devout Christian; I am a life-long atheist. Our almost opposite views do not mean that we cannot agree or have closely aligned principles. I have morals, but I would never suppose that these would necessarily tally with everyone else’s, and I would never tell anyone else how to live their life. I only expect people to obey the law and be aware of each other’s feelings.

Tom also tells a tale about shopping for CDs at Tower Records. His conclusions may have been wrong. There are sixteen years between my oldest and youngest daughter. My oldest has occasionally dropped off the youngest at school, and has taken her out with her on many occasions. Once or twice she has been taken for the youngest mother rather than sister.

I cite the above examples merely to illustrate that being a teenage mother, leaving school young, etc, does not automatically condemn one to joining the underclass. I also think that negative thinking can also mean thinking the worse when often the opposite is true.

I hope this has not come across as being too critical of Mr Harris – this is not my intention. In fact, a lot of what he writes makes sense.

I am just mindful that far too often we can rush to judgement in advance of the facts. I am out and about campaigning most weeks and agree that there is a lot of chatter about welfare and the supposed playing of the system.

Sometimes these discussions are obviously about the politics of envy; sometimes it is about fairness.

The welfare state does need a shake up. What began life as a crutch has, it would seem, become a lifestyle choice for some. But reform should not be about punishment. Being a mother should be seen as a valued choice. I do not see being young and having children as necessarily wrong. What I do think is wrong is expecting the state to pick up the tab.

Finally, being the son of someone whose various jobs included being a school caretaker and a window-cleaner, I do take umbrage about some jobs being described as ‘decent’, implying indecency for others. In my view, all work is of value, and very often the most valuable is the least valued. I would wager that an MP’s strike would be less noticed that those of dustmen. Who is doing the decent job out of these two examples?