Real life on the dole

IT was one of the most arresting television dramas of the decade, and it bequeathed both one of the most memorable characters and an instant catchphrase. Yosser Hughes, with his increasingly desperate, and increasingly aggressive, cries of "Gissa job", and "I can do dat", became a standard-bearer for men who wanted to work but instead found themselves discarded like so much jetsam.

Twenty-two years on, it's not just the separation of time which makes The Boys From The Blackstuff seem a distant memory. The days of two, and even three, million unemployed, of thousands marching for jobs, and of regular updates on the evening news contrasting the avalanche of jobs lost with the trickle of those created, all projected onto a map of Britain, seem to have happened on a distant world.

Earlier this month, unemployment dropped to a 20-year low, to 1.4 million, a rate of 4.7 per cent compared with the 11.9 per cent average in 1984. The number of people claiming benefits and looking for work is even lower, below 800,000. In the North-East, the unemployment rate of 5.3 per cent is the lowest since the mid-1960s.

To most people, these figures represent the benefits of a sustained period of economic growth. To Chancellor Gordon Brown, they are a step closer to that elusive goal of full employment. Almost half a century on, Macmillan's "You've never had it so good," rings true again.

But not everyone is able to share in this economic good fortune. Bob Stephenson has been unemployed since 1997. He's 53 now, and knows that his chances of ever getting another job are diminishing every day.

"As each day goes by it looks blacker and blacker," he says. "I know I have still got a lot to offer people, but I just haven't been given the opportunity to prove that."

Bob, who lives in Yarm on Teesside, trained as a fitter in the shipyards, but when shipbuilding work started to fall away he went to work for the Ministry of Defence in the Royal Naval Supplies Depot at Eaglescliffe. When that closed, he was offered a relocation to Bristol but he was reluctant to move: his father had just recently died and his mother was seriously ill, so he lost his job. As he puts it: "That was the start of my troubles."

He was a councillor, on Stockton Borough Council, and survived on council allowances, which meant he could not claim benefits, but he lost his seat in 1999 and has been on the dole ever since.

"I had a couple of spells out of work before, but I have always managed to get another job. I knew it was not going to be easy, but I didn't expect to be out of work at the end of the year."

Two or three days a week, Bob goes to the Trades Union and Unemployed Workers Centre in Middlesbrough, where he is a volunteer, helping other unemployed people find work, advising on employment rights and on benefit claims. He's taken two university courses, in welfare advice and law, and is now doing a part-time law degree.

He's mainly looking for work with voluntary or community groups. His last application was to work with former drug users, but the flow of cash to this area has largely dried up in recent years, with the result that these sort of jobs are thin on the ground.

"There are plenty of things that need doing, it is just that the organisations haven't got the money to employ people to do them," he says. "There are not a great deal of jobs for the number of people going after them. You hear all the stories that say there are hundreds of jobs out there, but they are not really there."

Bob, a dad-of-three, has applied for countless jobs over the years, and has had countless interviews. But he has been over-qualified for some of the jobs, under-qualified for others, too old for a few, even too young. Others he just hasn't got. "I haven't applied for a job in two weeks because there's been nothing around," he says.

Every two weeks, he signs on at the Job Centre, declaring he hasn't worked in the previous fortnight. If the staff are not too busy, they'll ask what he's done to find work, otherwise they'll just take his form and move on to the next claimant.

Every so often, he'll have a longer interview, where he'll listen to suggestions on how he can find work. "It's not that helpful, because there's not a lot they can do," he says.

Bob gets Job Seekers Allowance of £83 a week, but £23.90 of that is deducted straight away, the equivalent of all but £10 of his wife's wage from her part-time job in a school. When the school won an efficiency award and the staff shared in a cash bonus, his wife's £100 was immediately deducted from Bob's benefits. When he was employed, he overpaid on his mortgage, but now those payments, of £153 a month, have become due again. For the first time, he is in arrears.

"Life on the dole is not the bed of roses people think," he says. "We have coped, in a sense, and I had a small inheritance when my mother died, but now we're having to find the money for the mortgage we're really struggling. I'm in serious trouble at the moment, and I don't know how we're going to cover it."

Luxuries, needless to say, are virtually non-existent. Trips to the pub are a rarity, a night out unheard of. His wife Pat puts away a pound a week to go to her work's Christmas night out. Clothes are from charity shops. They don't have holidays, although they did have a day out in York two years ago.

"It is down-heartening to find yourself in this position. I'm not angry, but I wouldn't say I accept it, either. I think I have probably become hardened to it, after the length of time it has been. I suppose I have had to learn to cope with it," he says.

Bob is aware of the stigma still surrounding being on the dole, particularly in an age of nearly-full employment. If he's unemployed, he can't be looking hard enough, surely? He must be on the fiddle, or at least content to live a life of indolence. He knows what people think, but it doesn't bother him anymore.

"People have been brought up to think that everybody should be working, and everybody who isn't working is shirking or fiddling. It used to make me angry, but I don't get angry very easy now.

"Nobody says it to my face, but I know people think it. I would probably react very angrily if somebody did say it, because I know what I've gone through and what my family has gone through," he says.

After seven years on the dole, Bob is no longer thinking he's bound to have a job by Christmas. But neither is he ready to give up. He may not be sharing in the feel-good factor which is sweeping the country, but that isn't to say he doesn't want to. "I have been trying, and I have got to get something," he says. "I'm always hopeful."