Shameless

One broadsheet was this morning calling it ‘prole porn’ – the Shannon Matthews case has offered a unique opportunity for the middle classes to reassure themselves that the reason the underclass is worse off than them is because, well, they are worse than them.

In case you haven’t been indulging in the daily reports on this case, I’ll update you quickly: a nine-year-old girl from a council estate in Dewsbury went missing in February, and police spent 24 days looking for her until they finally found her, hiding in the base of a divan bed at her stepfather’s uncle’s house.

Shannon is one of seven children – and this part is unfailingly mentioned in press reports – by five different fathers, and since she was found it has been alleged that her mother was cheating on her husband Craig Meehan, 22, with the man who was holding Shannon, Michael Donovan, 39. The ages are always mentioned, too; I think the idea of someone having affairs with family members is made more shocking if there is a 17-year age difference between them.

Donovan has been charged with kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment; Meehan has been charged with having indecent images of children on his computer; and Karen Matthews has been charged with perverting the course of justice and child neglect.

It seems apt that the alleged plot to ‘kidnap’ Shannon was supposedly inspired by an episode of Shameless. At least on the basis of the title. Did the family seriously think they were going to get away with hiding their own child? Did they really think they were going to get money from the Madeleine McCann fund? Would it not have been an idea to erase their stash of child porn? And could Matthews at least have tried to remember how many children she had?

“When Shannon first went missing, Karen told everyone she had six children,” her sister Julie told a newspaper this week. “It took her days to remember she had seven. I remember screaming at the telly, because even though I’m not their mother, I knew she had seven.”

The thing is, the family in Shameless get into the scrapes they do because they are really bright. They’re always up to something, but ultimately they all stick by each other. This situation is the precise opposite of that. It’s an example of stupid, unpleasant people doing stupid, unpleasant things and then all trying to blame each other.

Which is why now that she’s been found, Shannon Matthews is getting as much press as Madeleine McCann. With the McCanns, the British public had a family to identify with; attractive, eloquent people they could get behind. While Shannon was missing, people simply didn’t know what to make of the unattractive, inarticulate Matthews/Meehan lot. Now they do.

A friend argued to me yesterday that this was an important cultural moment. That this focus on the council-estate dwelling underclass, on benefit claimants with large, unwieldy families, would be a good thing. The different tiers of society don’t mix at all any more – we live, work, shop, holiday in different places. If voters are to understand what their country is really like, they need to know about people like Karen Matthews.

I’m not so sure. Karen Matthews is everything voters think they know about the not-working class: callous, stupid, ugly, dishonest, promiscuous, and trying to get something for nothing.

But, though the bleeding heart liberal spiel I’m about to emit makes me feel a bit sick, I think the truth is somewhere between here and the fictional family in Shameless. It’s hard to stick to strict moral codes when you’re living on £78 a week. It’s hard to make good choices when you have little or no education. If you had a teenage mother who put you into care, you might not know how to run a family. People do it, of course, but it’s not easy; certainly not as easy as sitting in your nice house over your nice breakfast reading your newspaper full of long words and expressing disgust at people who don’t enjoy your advantages.