NINO STAFFA tions of the working classes and feared a revolution. Sir John Gorst, a Tory MP of the 1880's was one of many bourgeois philanthropists to express this « concern ». « Modern civilisation has crowded the destitute classes together in the cities making their existence thereby more conspicuous and more dangerous. These already form a substantial part of the population, and possess even now, though they are still ignorant of their full power, great politica} importance ... Almost every winter in London there is a panie lest the condition of the poor should become intolerable. The richer classes awake for a moment from their apathy, and salve their consciences by a subscription of money ... The annual alarm may some day prove a reality, and the destitute classes may swell to such a proportion as to render oontinuance of our existent social order impossible » (8). The people who now live in the « deprived » areas of Britain's cities are no longer as serious a threat t.p the ruling class system as the 19thC. urban poor. The maì\: « fear » is now not revolution but « crime » and « violence ». The decline of the traditional industria} areas was also partialt alleviated by the post-war «boom» of the 1950's. However, behind the facade of a fictitious Britain in which the people ad « never had it so good » there were signs showing that t economy was vulnerable and uncompetitive in world market! 1 • Together with the rise of the multinationals' influence on th economy of the nation, an increasing number of mergers and n increasing amount of government intervention in the o ~anisation of industriai production, the inhabitants of the « i ner city » were fast becoming a « problem ». The « problem » onsists of the fact that there is an imbalance between the la our needs of a developing « corporate economy » and the sk· ls of that section of the population which was gathered in t cities by an older form of exploitation during this century nd during the « boom » of the fifties. Consequently the lo status of the present day urban poor is reflected in the typ of accommodation and area in which they are forced to li in. THE POVERTY PROGRAMME « Concern » for the inner city « problem » prod ced a host of reports and projects from the mid-sixties onwa ds. In 1968 (8) CDP, Gilding the Ghetto, p. 51. 14
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