Injustice : Why Social Inequality Still Persists
by Daniel Dorling
(Policy Press, £9.99)

IT SHAMES us all that Danny Dorling has felt it necessary to publish an updated and revised version of this seminal book.

But with the Tories now rampaging like hyenas around a rotting carcass, the inbuilt inequality and injustice of our system is being reinforced with a vengeance.

Dorling uses irrefutable facts to demonstrate just how far injustice has eaten into the social fabric of our lives but he is not content to simply state the obvious, arguing forcefully for change.

He’s outraged by the indifference, inhumanity and even sadism of our governing elite and their super-rich supporters.

The raw facts of a society being torn apart are now becoming so blatant that governments are either trying to prevent the publication of embarrassing statistical data or are changing the criteria for measuring injustice and poverty.

As Dorling points out, few of us would say we agree with injustice but we know that we live in an unjust world.

As one of the world’s richest countries, we have people starving and dependent on foodbanks, families living on the streets or in appalling substandard housing. Many thousands work on zero-hours contracts.

At the same time we have a tiny elite, cut off from the overwhelming majority of Britons, who spend as much on one lunch as many families earn in a week.

Increasing poverty and injustice is the result of our governments clinging to outdated beliefs that propagate injustice and waste. These beliefs are presented as natural, long-standing and unchangeable. The media tell us society can’t be changed, that we have to live with it the way it is. Even the Labour Party has been brainwashed by the hegemonic rhetoric.

We need to understand what underpins the current injustices sustaining our now increasingly unsustainable lifestyles and that is what Dorling sets out to do in this book, arguing against the tenets of injustice that elitism is efficient, exclusion is necessary, prejudice is natural, greed is good and despair inevitable. They need challenging and debunking and this Dorling does, with ruthless and meticulous precision. Rightly, he warns that that we are doomed if we continue along our present trajectory.

Dorling’s one of those rare academics who has no fear of leaving the campus to join the political fray and, while he enjoys prestige as a human geographer, he’s also made his mark as a campaigning writer.

That’s why this book cannot be ignored.

And, while Dorling is deadly serious in what he writes, his dry sense of humour helps leaven the dire picture he inexorably paints on this broad canvas.