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The Richer, The Poorer charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. This landmark book shows how, for 200 years, Britain’s most powerful elites have enriched themselves at the expense of surging inequality, mass poverty and weakened social resilience.
Stewart Lansley reveals how Britain’s model of ‘extractive capitalism’ – with a small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic cake – has created a two-century-long ‘high-inequality, high-poverty’ cycle, one broken for only a brief period after the Second World War. Why, he asks, are rich and poor citizens judged by very different standards? Why has social progress been so narrowly shared? With growing calls for a fairer post-COVID-19 society, what needs to be done to break Britain’s destructive poverty/inequality cycle?
“The key takeaway of this excellent history is that poverty cannot be fought effectively, unless we also tackle the social and economic inequality that creates it.” Labour Hub
“Crucially, the book extends our understanding of inequality by showing the clear, dependent relationship, between poverty and wealth creation. The book forces readers to confront, not just the reliance of the rich on the poor to make money, but also the long-standing and stubborn nature of this relationship in Britain”. Brave New Europe
”A vivid description of the fall and rise of poverty and inequality... impressive survey and analysis of 200 years of inequality." Journal of Social Policy
“Important....passionate and thoroughly researched.” Political Quarterly
"Lansley is a master of the telling anecdote and has produced a wonderfully readable and insightful history of how the rich have impoverished the poor." Jonathan Bradshaw, University of York
“A readable and illuminating context to our present day extreme inequalities, exposing the narratives that justify these persistent conditions and the folly of ignoring them.” Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies
“Scrupulous, impressive and irrefutable. No one can read this damning historical portrait without wondering why we allow such grotesque gaps – seldom related to merit or social worth – to continue. An utterly necessary book.” David Kynaston, author of Austerity Britain
Introduction: Knighthoods for the rich, penalties for the poor
Part 1: 1800-1939
1. Hierarchical discipline
2. Britain’s gilded age
3. Public penury and private ostentation
4. A roller-coaster ride
Part 2: 1940-59
5. The future belongs to us
6. Britain’s ‘New Deal'
7. Brave new world
8. A shallow consensus
Part 3: 1960-79
9. The rediscovery of poverty
10. Poorer under Labour
11. Consolidation or advance?
12. Peak equality
Part 4: 1980-96
13. Don’t mention the 'p' word
14. Zapping Labour
15. The dark shadow of the Poor Law
16. The great widening
17. Money worship
Part 5: 1997-2010
18. The elephant in the room
19. Still born to rule
20. I'm not Mother Teresa
21. The house of cards
22. The good, the bad and the ugly
Part 6: 2011-20
23. Divide and rule: playing politics with poverty
24. A leaner state
25. Burning injustice
26. Growing rich in their sleep
27. The high-inequality, high-poverty cycle
Afterword: COVID-19 and 'the polo season'