100 years ago, this family were desperately seeking work
and, with no money, were struggling simply to survive.
"Up at five. Walked round and round the town until 12.
"Nothing doing anywhere, so I was fairly sick of walking about."
Last time, we tracked down the family, to find out what had happened to them.
That's the Eureka moment.
And we followed their journey, one that started in desperation and ended in undreamt of success.
What are the chances of that?
But that's the nature of things. You never know where the path is going to lead you to.
But, exactly 100 years on, unemployment is still with us.
In York, jobless men are on the march.
And there are still people living on the margins.
So this time, we ask what difference has a century made?
And have benefits brought with them new problems?
Life is easy on benefits. You get used to going to the bank every two weeks and pulling out your money.
As the new government embarks on a massive shake-up of the welfare state, we compare then with now,
to see what history can tell us about a life without work.
It's one of England's great cities.
A place of history and grandeur.
But York has always been a place of work, as well.
And, for the last century, two great industries have dominated -
the railways and the chocolate factories.
TOUR GUIDE: This pub is said to be haunted by three ghosts.
One appears as a disembodied pair of legs.
We think it's somebody who drank too much
and died legless.
Ive known York all of my life and, maybe just 20 years ago, this place
was still earning its living through chocolate and through trains.
But not really any more.
It's now much more about tourism and heritage.
But look beyond the picture-postcard image, scratch below the surface, and there is another side to York.
You'll find single mothers and young men living entirely on benefits.
And others who only survive on charity handouts, just to get by.
Anyone for baked beans? Please.
How can this be in a relatively wealthy city in one of the richest countries on earth?
Exactly 100 years ago, here in York, there was a man saying the same things.
Why are people being lost, being trapped on the margins?
Why are they not ever getting back into normal, working life?
And the thing is, the man who was asking those questions
was one of the richest, most influential people here in the city.
Seaborn Rowntree was a wealthy man.
The family business was chocolate, but his passion was social reform.
He wanted to improve people's lives, campaigning for decent housing and better working conditions.
His ideas were radical.
His work exposed poverty and influenced the creation of the welfare state.
In 1910, he began an extraordinary project, something that had never been done before.
He sent researchers into the slums of Edwardian York.
He asked the poor to describe their lives.
The scale was hugely ambitious.
He surveyed every working-class house in the city...
..and asked some families to keep a diary.
In a time before benefits, he wanted to know how the jobless survived.
"Purchases - Wednesday.
"Scrag end of mutton, eight pence.
"Potatoes, tuppence ha'penny.
"Two ounces of yeast, a penny.
Gas, tuppence.
"I became more anxious to get work, being out from early morning until
"late at night, with a stomach as empty as a soap bubble.
"But I struggled bravely on, knowing too well those dependent on me at home.
"At last, the crisis came, when I became penniless."
You have a kind of generic understanding of poverty,
in that you see photographs from that period.
You see photographs taken in the slums, and you are looking at the ragged children,
the barefoot children in the street.
But the sheer visceral nature of the level of poverty these people
were experiencing, you only get from the diaries,
and the accounts that are captured in Rowntree's book.
And it is an absolute eye-opener, as, of course, it was at the time.
"Meals during the week.
"Breakfast - tea with condensed milk and sugar, bread and butter.
"Dinner - tea, fish and potatoes.
"Supper - bread and dripping."
So how does that city compare to the York of today?
What does a life without work feel like exactly a century since Rowntree came to these streets?
Well, we're going to look for modern examples of the people he found -
the young, the old and the vulnerable.
Where has a century's progression left them, and how much has really changed?
100 years on, what emerges from Rowntree's detailed research
is the most difficult cases were those people who hadn't worked for a long time.
It's painful, but it's worth it.
It's worth it, yeah?
This is JJ McBride.
He's been out of work for more than a year.
His has been a complicated life, and his tattoos tell his story.
I don't just go into a tattoo parlour and find tattoos that I think look nice.
They have to actually mean something, or you can find meaning in them.
The first one I got was my son's name, which is this one here.
It says 'Ian'. He passed away 10 years ago.
And I felt it was only right I had his name on this arm, as he's always on my mind.
Ian was two years old when he died in an accident and JJ has been struggling with it ever since.
I got the eagle when I stopped using drugs and stopped drinking heavily.
This one here,
it represents the fact that I've been rushed into hospital that many times,
because of drink, because of drug usage, that I feel like I've beaten death, if you will.
The skull represents death and the panthers represent me.
He's drifted from town to town and job to job.
He's educated, and he's fit and able, but he lives in a hostel and exists on handouts.
Why is JJ in a life completely without work?
To many, JJ's story epitomises what's wrong with our system of benefits -
a financial safety net unknown to Rowntree when he wrote his report 100 years ago.
JJ says he's determined to find work, and like Rowntree's researchers, we'll watch him try.
Hello, mate. I've got an appointment at 20 past one.
It's Jonathan McBride.
Once a fortnight, he has to come to the Job Centre, to explain what he's doing to get off the dole.
Bar staff.
Mr McBride, please. Hello.
Hello, Jonathan. You alright?
He receives Jobseeker's Allowance, £65 a week.
But he has to show he's serious about looking for work.
How's it been going, then, over the last couple of weeks?
Not bad. The jobs that you put us for last week, I've applied for.
I got knocked back from Yates's.
Why, what did they say? Just that I had been out of work too long. Did they?
I needed to be going through training and get more experience. Is that what they said?
Yeah. Dear me.
'I think the key challenges we've got is'
the 18 to 24-year-olds.
We have about 1,200 of those claiming Jobseeker's allowance.
And lone parents are an issue for us, as well.
We've had some success there, though, but there's about 1,400 lone parents in York.
The longer-term unemployed people, people who have been unemployed for six months or more,
we have about 1,300 of those currently claiming and these tend to be a more challenging group.
That's very interesting, that you should say young people and the long-term unemployed,
because that's exactly what Seaborn Rowntree found 100 years ago. I guess things don't change,
especially when we're in a recession, you will find that people,
maybe the long-term unemployed and young people, of course,
find it difficult to demonstrate they do have suitable work skills.
Right, well, I've got just the ticket for you.
It's a position as a kitchen assistant.
Working between 12 and 39 hours a week, five days out of seven.
Lorraine has a job in mind, but JJ doesn't look bowled over. Is it something that...?
I'll have a look at it. I'm not really that good on food preparation.
No, but they're willing to train.
Right. It's more about reliability.
You don't have any problems with reliability, do you? No.
So, would you be prepared to go for a works trial with them? Yeah. Would you? Right.
With government spending being cut back,
people on Jobseeker's Allowance are coming under closer scrutiny.
It's about getting from CV in the bin, to getting to sitting
down there and having that actual interview itself.
There seemed to be the chance of a job?
Yeah, I mean, there are a few opportunities with the work trials,
which I'm going to crack on with today, when I get back home.
And then just go from there, see what happens.
JJ has been going through this process for more than a year, but nothing has changed.
100 years ago, Rowntree observed some people who'd been
out of work for a long time could lose the will to find a job.
"Many of them began as regular workers, and for a time, they continued to look for regular work
"till, very gradually, the search for it ceased.
"All employment requiring a serious effort of any kind grew distasteful, and if any other possible mode
"of existence presented itself, the systematic search for work ceased entirely."
In other words, if the unemployed got too many handouts, they could lose their motivation to find a job.
Here's me.
'JJ took me to the hostel where he's living.'
It's all right, isn't it? Yeah, it's quite spacious.
JJ has about £9 a day to live on.
His room is only temporary, but it is subsidised, so it costs him just under £1 a day.
That leaves around £8 for food, clothes and everything else.
JJ has lived on benefits most of his adult life.
How does it feel when somebody like me says,
"The benefits are making your life easier." How does that feel when that suggestion is put to you?
It hurts, but then again, it's the truth.
Life is easy on benefits.
You do get accustomed to it, you get used to going to the bank every two weeks and pulling out your money.
You do get used to just surviving.
So you're kind of institutionalised by lack of work?
In a way, yeah.
Because I've been I'm employed for so long,
you know, and because of the fact that all of the jobs I have gone for,
I've either not heard anything or just been straight rejected.
It's getting harder. I know it's possible,
because I've been in this situation before.
But it's just getting harder and harder to motivate myself.
It seems to me that JJ does want to turn his life around.
The willingness is there.
But the challenge, after so long without work, is enormous.
We'll see what happens to him over the coming weeks.
But what of the other groups living without work a century ago?
Rowntree told a story of Mrs Taylor, a woman raising her family on her own and without regular income.
"Dinner is just over when we enter and the members of the family are all in the living room.
"Mrs Taylor's husband drank and gambled and finally went
"to America without her, when the children were four and two.
"She has heard nothing of him since.
"But he ill-treated and half-starved her and she is better off without him than with him."
These people have no safety net. They are very conscious that if
they don't make the rent, then the abyss opens up underneath them.
Of course, there is technically a safety net. There is the workhouse.
But the terror the workhouse held for ordinary working people means that they would literally
face the prospect of starvation, in order to keep a roof over their heads, so they're not going to go
into the workhouse. And that is quite an astonishingly...
That was life in the raw.
"They have to pay the rent. And even if they are positively starving, the money for this is put aside.
"Purchases during the week. Monday - soap, threepence.
"For laundry, ha'penny. A pint of milk, penny ha'penny.
"Rent, four shillings.
"Tuesday - gas, tuppence.
"Thursday - sewing cotton, fourpence.
"Matches, ha'penny. Sticks for fuel, a penny.
"Gas, a penny."
Life for Mrs Taylor was hand to mouth.
She would make leftovers last for days.
Are there any Mrs Taylors today?
What would Rowntree make of a single mother in York in 2010?
Are you going to roll your sleeves up?
What are you going to have then, Riley? Pizza. Pizza?
What's your favourite stuff on there?
Ham and cheese.
Hayley Watson, like Mrs Taylor, doesn't have a partner.
How many do you want it cutting into?
He left before Riley was born and she hasn't worked for 18 months.
If you read this diary, I don't know if you read it, this one, this is Mrs Taylor.
The idea of living back then without work on your own with children, it was a grim existence.
You'd be pretty desperate at times. How would you characterise being in a similar situation a century later?
I wouldn't say I would use any of those words, really.
It's not great, but...
It's OK, you manage.
How do you manage, then, do you think about where you shop, how you shop, what you buy?
I just sort of make sure that...
I sort of think about what we're going to have that week.
And then, sort of, get the things I need.
I kind of try and make sure that Riley gets a treat maybe once a week or once every other week.
There's my magazine. Yes, you've got a magazine, haven't you, now?
And I suppose the other side would be some people would say...
You know, what we had 100 years ago was unacceptably difficult.
But what we've got now is something that's the other way,
that makes it easier for people to live without work.
That somehow there is this easy life there on benefits.
Yes. But...it's a choice, really.
Do you want to have to really save,
you know, and get by, to have the things that you want.
Or do you go to work and it be that little bit easier.
And I want to do that, because I want him to not have to get by on things.
I want him to enjoy...
being little.
And not have to worry about things.
Can I've my pudding? You want your pudding right now?
While Mrs Taylor received nothing, Hayley is supported by the state.
Her rent and council tax are paid for.
And, for everything else, she receives a total of £128 a week, for her and Riley.
So, as you'd imagine, when it comes to the basics, life for
single parents has improved enormously, compared to a century ago.
But the story is more complicated.
In Britain today, half of all single-parent families live on the lowest income levels.
Their children are more likely to be disadvantaged.
Single parents were strugglin a century ago
and many of them are, relatively speaking, struggling today.
It is harder as a single parent,
because you've got to think about one income.
Is one income enough to pay your bills, your rent or your mortgage,
pay your child care, if you've got additional things to do.
You know, you're looking after a dependent and that means that
the responsibility falls on to you.
So life is more difficult than if you were in a two-income household.
What about life on benefits, if you're a single mum?
Can you not only be caught by the safety net, but effectively stay on the safety net?
Can you rest on it? Can you have a decent life on benefits?
No, you can't have a decent life on benefits. It is hand-to-mouth existence.
It does require a lot of creativity to do it well.
In the long term, most people don't stay on benefits, because obviously, it is too difficult.
And it's supposed to be difficult.
It's not supposed to be a life where you're living comfortably.
It isn't a comfortable existence as a single parent on benefits, most definitely.
"A very heavy burden falls on Mrs Taylor.
"She's clever, careful, and conscientious.
"Though she has no training, she does some dressmaking
"and her customers are among the poor people of the neighbourhood.
"A day's charring is accepted when dressmaking is slack."
The Taylor story, possibly of all the accounts, has the most immediate modern resonance.
It just comes across time and time again,
when you read the account of what she's doing,
that within the limitations of her economic situation,
she's independently minded, strong, determined to do the best she can for her children.
The way the story is told is that this is not an unusual situation for a woman to find herself in,
which is a very useful eye-opener, in a corrective to our perception of that period of history.
No-one could accuse Mrs Taylor of sponging off the state.
But that's the sort of criticism many single parents face today -
that young women get pregnant to get a house and benefits.
From the young people you meet, do you sense that that stigma attached to single parents is still there?
Definitely, particularly for young parents.
I've worked with over 100 over the years and every one had a story
to tell me about a stranger coming up to them in the street or people giving them funny looks.
So, they really do feel really keenly that public disdain for,
particularly young single parents, is alive and well.
I don't like the stereotype of being a stay-at-home mum.
And the young mums and...
..you know, just having babies so they can stay at home and they don't have to work.
I don't like that stereotype.
Are you going to have just a little bit? No.
Go on. Does it really annoy you, then?
It does, a lot, yeah.
It does annoy me quite a lot. Why?
Because you can't judge everybody the same. Because not everybody...
feels like that and wants to do that. It's just sometimes the circumstances that you're in
mean that's the way it has to be, as opposed to...
Are there single mums like that, do you think? That just want to stay at home?
Yeah, there are mums that just want to stay at home and that, I suppose, that's their choice.
But it's not something I...
I feel like I want to do.
What have you done today, then? What's in your hair?
Have you done painting?
Glueing? Sand?
Hayley, like JJ, says she wants to work.
It's even harder for her, because she's got Riley to look after.
But if she gets a job, the benefit system will continue to help by paying for some of her child care.
The system is there to help people like Hayley back to work.
Over the next few weeks, we'll find out whether it works and Haley finds the job she wants.
This system of financial support has grown from nothing since Rowntree's work a century ago.
Now, the benefit system he helped to create accounts for more than a quarter of all government spending.
That cost could never have been imagined by Rowntree.
He simply believed those without work needed support.
His work reminds you that it's about human beings and human stories.
It's not about impersonal forces and laws of nature.
This is about real people and the effects of the economy on real people.
And that how real people survive in the economy is down to human action.
Rowntree believed in practical help to get people back to work.
In 1910, Labour Exchanges, an idea he supported, were just being introduced.
The concept was straightforward. You registered your name and hoped it would be matched with a vacancy.
100 years on, searching for work has become an industry.
Now there are more than 1,000 Job Centres,
more than 10,000 recruitment companies and nearly 2,500 careers advice centres.
You don't get two chances to make a first impression.
The CV or the application form that you present will be the only chance to impress that employer.
JJ's been sent to this training centre to get some practical advice.
CV, then. Full title, curriculum vitae, Latin for 'course of life'...
JJ says he constantly applies for jobs
and is constantly rejected.
Of course, if he doesn't look for work, he'll lose his benefits.
You'll apply for jobs. Your expectations are raised.
You're anticipating getting an interview and you don't even hear back.
And that's becoming par for the course. You know, you have to brush yourself down...
It is not just about teaching practical skills.
Eamonn says, in 2010, some young people need
to be convinced they should give up their life without work.
We potentially have a culture where young people
think that maybe they don't have to do a great deal,
they can make a lot of money without doing a lot of training
or a lot of studying.
And they don't see the rewards of going out and working and contributing.
You're having to make this case, you're having to make the case for work?
Making a case for work. Absolutely.
People will be surprised that young people need to be talked into having to go into work.
I think they do. There need to be lessons in the benefits of going to work.
But, sometimes, a bit of inspiration is all they need.
Today, JJ is hitting the streets with his freshly printed CVs.
Hiya. Can I drop my CV at all? Of course you can.
We watched JJ and saw echoes of the unemployment diaries written for Rowntree a century ago.
"Monday, July 18th.
"Got up at 5am.
"Went round to several places to see if I could find any work,
"but did not get any."
'All I'm really looking for is this one opportunity.
'All I really need is one chance.
'One person to say, "We'll give him a go".'
"Back at noon, no breakfast, dry bread for dinner.
"Went out again at two, walked about until seven. Nothing."
Not surprisingly JJ's quest for work seems less desperate than a century ago.
The benefits he gets mean that there isn't the urgency that the threat of destitution used to bring.
For decades, we've debated the balance between a need for a safety net
and the incentive to work, and once again it is on the agenda.
MOBILE PHONE RINGS
Oh, hang on.
Hello.
Hiya, Lorraine, how are you doing?
Back at the hostel he gets some news and it's looking promising.
What's your number? Dawn.
Yeah, will do, thanks a lot. Bye.
What was that, what did she say?
Lorraine from the Job Centre. She just rung to tell me that she's rung up this company
that we couldn't get in touch with earlier about a work trial for a kitchen assistant.
I've just got to go up and pick up an application form tomorrow.
'After 18 months on the dole, could this be the chance of the job?'
Now 100 years ago, Rowntree highlighted another group whose problems resonate today -
those who lose work when they are older.
He came across Mr Campbell, a man in his forties who'd just lost a job he'd had for 17 years.
What Seaborn Rowntree wanted Mr Campbell to do, along with everybody else
keeping a diary, was to write down what it was to be unemployed.
But he didn't just want a list of facts, he wanted to know
what it felt like to be without work in this city 100 years ago.
He'd spent his working life as a fitter, he supported a wife and three children,
but overnight he went from full-time employment to nothing.
Now from the moment Mr Campbell lost his job, he was desperate
to try and find new work, we can see that from his diary.
He came to the library every day to look in the newspapers to see if there were jobs around.
He says here he was hoping against hope that there was something for him.
It goes on to say, "I was answering advertisements in the York Press and Herald,
"all of which came to absolutely nothing in the end."
"It is unfortunately indisputable that when an unskilled worker gets past 40 he finds it very difficult
"to meet with an employer who is willing to give him regular work.
"He may be able to work quite as well as a younger man, but in a labour market
"where the supply of unskilled labour almost invariably exceeds the demand,
"an employer, having to choose between a younger man and an older man,
"not unaturally, chooses the younger."
This is where lads used to start work on a morning.
Looks as if they could still be turning up today.
It's like the Mary Celeste almost, you know if the bodies were here you wouldn't think anything had changed.
In some ways Bill Rawcliffe is a modern-day Mr Campbell, although he's a skilled worker.
He certainly shares the sense of shock. He's just lost his job, after almost 40 years on the railways.
This is the first time that Bill has been back to the depot since he was made redundant.
'All I've ever wanted to do when I was at school was work on the railway.
'Didn't mind what I did on the railway, it's just what I'd always wanted to do.'
Bill's story says a lot about the city and the industry he grew up in.
Me old rule book.
He joined British Rail in 1973 as a 15-year-old messenger.
'I can't describe it, its just like, it is the end of the road.'
I'm not ready for retirement, I've got a lot of work in me.
There's just nothing there for us, nobody seems to care.
Me, personally, I feel betrayed.
Nobody to blame.
It's just gone.
There you go.
That's it, innit?
Thrown on the scrapheap at 53.
York was a rail town.
Bill worked his way up to become a foreman and a union shop steward.
That's the group of guys that I worked with, That's me there, in my younger days.
It was a bit like a family, you know, we all worked together,
we went out together, we played football.
This is jobs a bit later on, in the mid-to late '80s.
That's my backside pushing that, probably the best view we've got.
He watched an industry change.
The rail works cut 2,000 jobs in the '90s.
It wasn't just a working relationship, it was actually our way of life.
That's how I've learnt my job, I've learnt it, we learned from each other,
hundreds of years' worth of experience in there.
And here we've got to the situation now where it's all been disintegrated.
After privatisation in the early '90s, Bill's job was passed to Railtrack.
Though his work never really changed, his employers did.
In 1996, he was transferred to another maintenance company
and then, two years later, his final move, to a company called Jarvis.
Bill had no choice in these moves, but when Jarvis
went into administration earlier this year, he was out.
Bill is fighting to get his job back.
Tell him to ring back.
When he was made redundant, the maintenance contracts were passed from Jarvis on to other companies.
Tell him he has to ring back, he has to ring back, because you can't ring home after.
For Bill, the idea that other firms and other workers are now doing his job is the hardest thing to take.
So he's trying to mobilise support for a protest.
Sean, how are you doing, mate?
Listen, I don't really ask people for much, Sean, but we stood 100% behind you guys
when you had your trouble. I would not expect you to go
and do that job, when it's our work and we've been thrown out of the door.
I'll be disappointed, to say the least. You know I only ask when it's deadly serious.
This can't get more serious.
Tonight we're here for one thing and one thing only,
to let them know that we aren't happy that they've taken our jobs.
CHEERING
The demo's at a site in West Yorkshire,
where he and some of the others who lost their jobs were due to work.
Most here haven't received any compensation - no money for eight weeks.
Can I ask you who you are?
You wouldn't have normally worked here, would you? No.
Right, there's 1,200 of us been sacked and I'm asking,
as a trade union member, in all consciousness, would you be prepared to go home tonight? No.
Lads, I've asked the guy, let him get in.
Just let him go in, let him go in. Thank you very much.
No, I'm not shaking your BEEP hand, you're doing my job, mate.
Boo! Boo! Shame on you! Shame on you!
Bill's union, the RMT, supports the workers
trying to get their jobs back, but doesn't officially back this demo.
Bill puts his case to every car that arrives.
It's our job, you know it's our job.
But the thing is I'm sub-contract, this is my job, I've got bills and I've got kids.
Look, how long have you been doing this?
I don't want to have an argument with you, I just want to go to work, that's all I want.
OK, we'll remember you. Right. All right. Scab. Move.
Move out, let him go.
Scab! Scab! Scab! Scab! Scab!
Bill treats this like a strike and thinks those arriving should show support and refuse to work.
Can I ask you to go home tonight? We won't do this again.
Yeah, but if I go home, I lose my job.
None of the drivers accept Bill's case. Listen. Listen.
We have gone on strike before.
The exchange has become increasingly angry and police step in to keep the cars moving.
Can you just step back.
Scab! Scab!
The protesters are calling the workers scabs,
because they think they are behaving like strike-breakers, but there is no strike.
Scab! Scab! Scab!
Scab! Scab! Scab! Scab!
Scab! Scab!
Scab! Scab! Scab! Scab!
The workers are simply doing their jobs for companies with legitimate contracts.
I don't know a better word than scab for them, to be honest with you.
We're not allowed to say it, because it's hurtful.
Well it should be bloody hurtful, they should go home after the shift and find it difficult to sleep.
We work on rails all over the area, all over the country.
We just go where the work is, contracting.
They're calling you scabs, is that what you are?
No. Why not?
How can we be scabs when they haven't got a company to picket against?
Scab! Scab! Scab! Scab! Scab! Scab!
What are you doing?
Come on, man, you know the craic.
The worst moment for the protesters is when Bill and his mates spot
people they have worked with in the past.
John!
100 years ago there was no protest when Mr Campbell lost his job.
Back in 1910, there was precious little support for those tipped into a life without work.
Mr Campbell actually wrote in his diary how it felt to ask for help.
So Mr Campbell came down to the labour exchange,
which had actually just opened up that year, 1910, in York.
And he got a card and became a member
and did what he thought he was expected to do,
which was to come down to the labour exchange every day and find out what work was available.
But to read from his diary, "One morning, in handing in my card, as usual, I was completely
"dumbfounded to hear him remark that I was to call only once a month.
"Now at this point, I would like any commonsense people to try and put
"themselves in my position, when he closed the small office window and left me to my own keen reflection.
"I turned away and the only remaining strength in my body seemed to completely forsake me."
I think that's really powerful, I think you can feel the emotion he had that day, because this was
a man who had no money, no food at home and now no prospect of a job for a month.
In some ways, Bill Rawcliffe is in a similar situation to Mr Campbell.
Until his benefit claim is processed he, too, has no money coming in.
He is determined to stay on the railways, but the Job Centre have sent him to seek a careers adviser.
"CV", I can do a CV.
"Careers information" - I had a career.
Let's see how they can help me.
Bill thought he had a job for life. He's not finding it easy being back on the market.
I'm 53 years old, I've worked on the railway since I was 15.
I know it inside out. So I've no idea what else I could do.
I mean I have no IT skills, for example, with that,
the truth is I've lived in York all my life and I know there's no work.
There is work, but it's not necessarily work that you have
the right experience and skills for. That's the problem.
At end of day, I'll do whatever it is I have to do.
I have to do something, cos I've no money.
So I have to do something and I'll do anything. OK.
But, that doesn't mean to say you have to like it.
No, but obviously...
I don't want to sound as if I'm not bothered, I am.
But I actually really, really want me old job back. Of course.
So, what do I do next?
Well, it would be a useful exercise for you to actually start to put together your career history,
look at your skills, your aptitudes, your strengths.
Can we agree on that? We'll put that on the list.
Well, I am already doing it. It's there. You have one already?
I've got all the details, it's just, as I say, everything's handwritten, so me wife will do it.
I have got all the details there, that's not a problem.
It will take me ten or 15 minutes to knock a CV up. OK.
Well, although you're saying that the CV is in hand,
you're in a very difficult position. I appreciate that.
I don't think you're really, really looking at this as an option.
I think that you're caught up in what's happening with the appeal.
I'm still a bit bitter and angry, I think, at the moment.
Not directed at you. That's alright, I'm not taking it personally.
You have got a wealth of experience, but you need to put yourself in a strong position, potentially,
to have to vie with other people for your own job.
So having your CV, in the first instance, I would say, that's a given, it has to be done.
With redundancies increasing following the Spending Review, there will be a lot more Bill Rawcliffes.
Compared to someone in their late 20s, it's twice as difficult for a man in his 50s to find a job.
But Bill says he won't stop fighting.
He's determined to get his old job back and return to the railways.
It's dawn in a field on the edge of York.
In one of the country's more prosperous cities, a man's day is about to start.
Of everything I saw in York, this is a scene that could be straight out of Rowntree's research.
Richard lives the most basic of lives.
This is home, and it has been for six months,
right through last winter, when the overnight temperatures in York fell to minus 10.
Well, it's Friday morning.
It's been raining for the third night on the trot,
so my tent is completely soaked
and damp.
He ended up here because he has enormous debts.
He tried to get benefits, but found the system unsupportive and hostile.
So he came here and he gets nothing.
What about trying to get work out here?
You are trying to find work and yet you're living in a tent, you know, by a road.
How is that combination working?
For a start, nobody knows I'm homeless.
If I go for interviews, get in contact with people, I just try to clean up.
I try to go to the swimming baths, get a shower there.
And food, I just eat as I need it.
Get food from the shops on a daily basis.
I try not to give the impression that I'm homeless.
Richard's work is through temp agencies.
It's low paid, manual work and it's unpredictable
'Nobody knows where I live.
'Work would be probably shocked that I turn up for work and I've been sleeping in a tent.
'I'm working for an agency right now, so I wait on them to call me.
'It's a bit hit and miss, sometimes I work, sometimes I don't.'
But today there has been no call.
Richard is walking into York to get something to eat.
Personal debt, casual work and an invisible life.
It is a tough existence, but it is, in part, one he's chosen.
He's heading to a charity that feeds the vulnerable and the homeless.
Every morning, right around the corner from York's tourist streets, they come for hot food and company.
CONVIVIAL CHATTER
It's easy for me to imagine 100 years ago people were not helped.
I can imagine a scenario where 100 years ago, people were desperate, on the streets.
But most of us, I think, like to think that's gone now
and that the system is such that people are looked after.
That we let that go and now things are fine.
Yeah, we all like to have a comfortable existence
and forget about the marginalised people.
But they do exist. There's a number of people around and about in York
that have very limited prospects, very limited money coming in and no roof over their head.
But if we only looked for them, we could find some of them.
They are there? They are there.
This is the last stop.
If this wasn't here, then it would be nothing, no support at all?
I think you could say it's the first stop.
A number of people first come in here when something has gone wrong.
They need the social contact, they need to be involved - with other people.
Other people who, hopefully, can give them a structure to their life.
For Richard, this is one of the few constants in his life, but he lives for that call from the temp agency.
It can be really frustrating, just waiting for the phone call, day-in, day-out.
And really disappointing when time goes by and you hear nothing.
And all I want to do really is work. That's all I want to do and get myself straightened out.
I think the only way I'm going to get myself sorted out is by working.
It's tough sometimes to stay positive. I do have downers at times,
but it passes. You just have to focus on your goals, and just, you know,
maintain your hope that things are going to change and that you're going to get through it
and, you know, have a better life.
Richard has plenty of time to reflect, as he waits for a phone call from the temp agency.
He sees this work as his only way out.
But depending on unreliable work, and refusing to ask for help, keeps him locked into this lifestyle.
Maybe he shows what a life without benefits would look like.
He's the only one of the people I met who is working and yet,
he has the most desperate life, an existence that seems to be taking its toll on his health.
How is it going on the food front? You look very thin. It's not going too bad.
I normally eat plenty, though sometimes I feel like I don't look after myself as well as I should do.
What have you eaten today? I had some porridge at the Carecentre and some biscuits and some toast.
When will you eat again? I'll eat tomorrow.
Probably tomorrow morning.
That doesn't seem a lot of food for a big bloke who's working.
It's probably not enough, but sometimes it's all I feel like.
It's just something you have to get used to.
What does Richard's story tell us?
Well, you can live without benefits.
Casual work will provide an income, for even those in the most basic situations.
There is a life beyond the reach of the State.
But Richard's life is, even at this stage, one he has chosen.
He could look for a place in a hostel or a shelter, but he chooses not to.
He has not been failed by the Rowntree model for a welfare state.
No amount of government money can reach all of those who live out on the margins.
Across town, Hayley's situation has changed.
Come on, now.
We don't want to be late, do we?
Where's Mummy going today?
Can you remember? Sch...work!
To work today! I nearly said school.
You nearly said school.
Four months on, Hayley's life is the one that's changed the most.
She has just got a job working part-time at a nursery.
She starts today.
How's that going to work with child care?
Well, he's going to go to Breakfast Club on a morning
and he's going to go to a child minder on an afternoon.
What do you think about Mummy going to work?
No! You don't think I should go to work?
Why not? I don't want you to.
Why? Because I don't.
Why not? Because I don't want you to.
But then, if Mummy goes to work, we'll have much more pennies. What?!
Bye, bye!
Hayley's is a story firmly from 2010.
Where it failed for Richard, for her, the welfare system has worked.
The state provided benefits when she was unemployed and will now help with child care.
What do we want?! Jobs back! When do we want them?! Now!
Bill's story has also moved on.
# Justice for the Jarvis boys... #
He fought so hard for his job,
because he thought he might get it back.
He now knows that's not going to happen.
Some of the sacked workers have been offered jobs with the new contractor,
but Bill is not one of them.
He's applied for more than 60 other vacancies, but without success.
He's still looking for a job.
Rowntree's research into unemployment and poverty
helped shape the welfare state, as we know it today.
But, 100 years since he did that work in this city, the entire welfare system is under scrutiny.
Because, as the government looks to cut budgets,
then just how you qualify for benefits becomes a key question.
So single parents, the young and long-term unemployed
could see changes in what they have to do to get benefits,
even in how much money they get.
Away from these city centre streets, in the shadows,
there is a twice-weekly ritual that Rowntree would have recognised.
Ham or cheese? You like ham, don't you?
'Down at Hungate, where the slums were in the early 1900s,'
food is still handed out to the poor.
Anyone for baked beans? Please.
These people are not all homeless, some are simply unemployed.
I've got meatballs and hot dogs.
And here tonight is a familiar face - JJ.
Why do you come down here? It's just thinking, you know,
for weeks that I don't have any money and I'm running low on food.
I just come down here, have a brew, get some food, that'll tide you over. What difference does it make?
A big difference, really.
Because, like I say, when you've not got anything and you've not got any money to get anything
or anything like that, it's a case of, it just gives you a little bit to tide you over.
It gets you through.
Since we finished filming, JJ seems to have started turning his life around.
He's moved out of the hostel and into a flat and is now holding down a job in a pub kitchen.
Julia has been coming here for more than 20 years to help people like JJ.
People like you 100 years ago were the, kind of, last rung.
How do you feel about, that for some people, you're still providing that kind of safety net, 100 years later?
Sad. I'm gobsmacked, but sad.
I mean, it shouldn't be down to somebody opening the back of their boot and giving out food, should it?
You've packed twice what you packed last time, Julia.
At least for another few years, I shall be still down here, until they stop coming.
Despite the lifetime's work of a man who used to this city to show what needed to change,
for some, the solutions to ending a life without work
remain as out of reach now as they were a century ago.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
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