Unemployment

I first became of the unemployment problem when young. At that time I had just come back from Burma, where unemployment was only a word, and I had gone to Burma when I was still a boy and the post-war boom was not quite over. When I first saw unemployment men at close quarters, the thing that horrified and amazed me was to find that many of them were ashamed of being unemployed. I was very ignorant, but not so ignorant as to imagine that when the loss of foreign markets pushes two million men out of work, those two million are any more to blame than the people who draw blanks in the Calcutta Sweep. But at that time nobody cared to admit that unem­ployment was inevitable, because this meant admitting that it would probably continue. The middle classes were still talking about 'lazy idle loafers on the dole' and saying that 'these men could all find work if they wanted to', and naturally these opinions percolated to the working class themselves. I remember the shock of astonishment it gave me, when I first mingled with tramps and beggars, to find that a fair proportion, perhaps a quarter, of these beings whom I had been taught to regard as cynical 'parasites, were decent young miners and cotton-workers gazing at their destiny with the same sort of dumb amazement as an animal in a trap. They simply could not understand what was happening to them. They had been brought up to work, and behold! It seemed as if they were never going to have the chance of working again. In their circumstances it was inevitable, at first, that they should be haunted by a feeling of personal degradation. That was the attitude towards unemployment in those days: it was a disaster which happened to you as an individual and for which you were to blame.

Why did the author know nothing about unemployment before he came to Great Britain?

What does the author blame for the rise in unemployment?

Does he consider the unemployed in any way responsible for their situation?

Rewrite the sentence “I remember the shock…” beginning “A quarter of…”. Keep your sentence simple.

What is the unemployed's attitude to their situation and how has this attitude been formed?

Which sentence from the text best summarises the main idea?

a) T first became aware of the unemployment problem when

young.

b) When T first saw unemployed men...

c) In their circumstances it was inevitable...

How would your life style have to change if you lost your job or other means of support? Do you think it would affect your relation­ships?