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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics

From the civil war to now, poverty endures

Portion of The Beggar Boy by John Opie (1761-1807), Falmouth art gallery.
A section of the painting The Beggar Boy by John Opie (1761-1807). Photograph: Falmouth Art Gallery

Re Beth Steel’s article (I’m from an English working-class town. When will society stop looking at us through the rearview mirror?, 6 September), I too have been concerned about my home town. I live about half a mile outside it and I am regularly shocked by the Dickensian (sometimes more Hardy-esque) conditions that former acquaintances live in.

The deprivation is alarmingly similar to what I saw as a child. I don’t understand how the inequalities in our society haven’t declined in the past 40 years. So much else has changed.

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