Poverty Safari, page 16
To get a sense of how difficult it is to concentrate when there are things going on around you, pick up your smart phone and start thumbing through a selection of ring tones, while continuing to read this page – I’ll wait. Now imagine you are already pretty stressed, perhaps because you have no money, because or debt collectors and council tax are breathing down your neck. Now throw in the fact you are maybe not the best reader. Maybe you are a single mum, with a learning difficulty like dyslexia, or you might be battling with a drink problem. Maybe you’re looking to get back into education and have a limited amount of time for activities that require concentration? Maybe you are a young man, recently released from prison, perhaps on a tag, who has been given an apprenticeship in a barbers or local deli but have no experience? Throw a little ADHD in the mix and an underlying psychological issue, which is exacerbated by stress, and suddenly the simple act of entering a library becomes an immense act of personal courage.
Walking into a library is often the first step a person takes out of social exclusion, unemployment and poverty. When you don’t live this kind of precarious life every day then it’s easy to forget that many other people do – and it’s bloody hellish. For many of the people who depend on libraries, there are already enough barriers in place – economic, cultural and social – to dissuade them from even attempting to try something as challenging as filling out an application form, disputing a sanction from the Job Centre or learning to read.
Then we have the senior citizen, largely forgotten in the beard-stroking dither of progressive politics. Perhaps a widow who lives alone, or a disabled man who uses a wheelchair and can only access a certain number of buildings in the area. The library is one of the only places they’ll be allowed to stop for more than five minutes without being expected to spend money. And let’s not forget, there’s a reason people in areas like this need to get out of their homes every now and then: paper-thin walls that mean you can hear your neighbours flushing toilets, boiling kettles, having sex, arguing, doing DIY, cutting their grass, revving their cars – at every hour of the day. This is not to mention the less-than-serene sounds of a stressful community, and all the challenging, often frightening, behaviour it fuels; couples engaged in aggressive disputes, drunken young people shouting in the streets, strangers coming and going all day and night. Not to mention the regular sound of police cars, ambulances and fire engines.
The library is one of many dwindling resources, like the community centre, that act as safety valves. A library provides a safe and supportive environment where vulnerable people can educate themselves or mentally regroup. But increasingly, they will arrive at the library to find children running around, or people taking part in discussions or courses, or Mother/Toddler groups. These activities are equally essential – but they should be going on in a community centre. Libraries have become busy, often quite noisy places, which seriously defeats their intended purpose. Councils are under increasing pressure to maintain a high level of service with fewer resources at their disposal and the axe is falling on the services with the least capacity for resilience. How odd that in the social pressure cooker of a deprived community, characterised by chronic stress and low educational attainment, something as simple and vital as a quiet place to be with your thoughts has become such an unreasonable expectation.
There was a time when the authorities could get away with this stuff. Times are a-changing – and not for the better. In these communities, stress levels are so high and people feel so aggrieved about having their concerns dismissed and ignored, that the usual methods of pacifying their anger are failing. Now people are not only angry, but also less likely to be interested in lectures about how to express that anger.
Stressful social conditions have a psychological impact on everyone who is subject to them. Over time, they change the way people behave. This, in turn, changes the shape and direction of a community. Anger and resentment, fertilised by the deeper psychological challenges associated with poverty – anxiety, depression, poor lifestyle and low self-esteem, social insecurity – place a significant emotional strain on everyone. This strain can limit human capacity for empathy, tolerance and compassion and makes many people angry, agitated, resentful and frightened. Now, with the rise in xenophobia and racism, and the rhetoric that stokes this prejudice, it is not hard to see where many who spend every day of their lives in these conditions have wrongly decided to turn their anger. This is what happens in a community with no centre.
23
Housekeeping
POVERTY NOT ONLY expresses itself in the behaviour and lifestyles of the poor, but also in their social attitudes. Apathy is a big one. Scepticism of authority and public institutions is another. People are raised in homes where nobody believes they can effect change and they grow up internalising those beliefs. The apathy of the poor, in terms of politics, is so apparent that it’s factored into political calculations: leaders pitch policy to those who are more likely to participate. This, in turn, creates a cycle where the interests of those who do not participate are not considered, which leads to more apathy. But every now and then, when things are at breaking point, social deprivation vomits up an antidote to apathy.
It’s one of the paradoxes of poverty: the harder things get, the more resilient some people become. Cultures of resistance are forged on the anvil of social deprivation and for every person who withers in poverty’s wake, another grows more resolute and determined. Social deprivation can tear communities apart, but it can also renew them because it forces people to cooperate, innovate and evolve to find the solutions to their common problems.
The rise of foodbanks across the UK perhaps best encapsulates this paradox. On one hand, it’s morally outrageous that in a country of such undoubted prosperity people should have to access foodbanks to feed their children or face going without themselves. But those very foodbanks, rather than merely conduits of charity, have become fiefdoms within deprived communities, around which people become engaged and organised. It’s an uncomfortable truth of poverty and of life generally: struggle forces us to evolve. After nearly a decade of austerity, something is stirring again in the schemes, estates and housing projects of the west. What form it will take is not yet clear, but there is a battle going on for the soul of working class communities. People are beginning to organise and just like Pollok in the ’90s, the generals are not mainstream politicians, but local people themselves, coming together in spite of them. Castlemilk is a district on Glasgow’s south side that was developed as a ‘housing scheme’ in the 1950s. But as we know, the well-intended promise of the housing scheme was never fulfilled. For many it quickly turned into a living nightmare and by the ’80s had become synonymous with crime, drugs and violence. The anger and scepticism that built in communities like Castlemilk over successive decades, not only due to poor social conditions but also because of the lack of opportunity to escape them, became a volatile cultural energy, oscillating between anger and apathy, that many movements have since tried to politicise in the hope of harnessing it for electoral purposes. The sudden interest in the daily plight of the ‘working class’, ‘lower class’ and ‘the poor’ always seems to peak in the run-up to an election (or a referendum). This interest quickly peters out. Once the politicians get power, they retreat into their privileged political spheres. This pattern has been duly noted by locals, who are often privately regarded by politicians as lacking the necessary sophistication to do politics right.
‘I’m not a politician, says Cathy Milligan, a 53-year-old community activist who grew up in Castlemilk. Cathy recently ran as an independent in the local elections. She, along with a core group of community activists, founded Castlemilk Against Austerity (CAA) in 2014. The fact that Cathy is not a politician is currently her biggest asset, though how long that will remain the case is anybody’s guess. Political figures are not highly regarded in communities like this. Cathy is wise to disassociate herself from the word ‘politician’, rather as Joe from The Barn rejected the term ‘manager’ – they both know these words arouse suspicion and scepticism. For now, Cathy Milligan is a woman of the people. She is not only visible in the area but also fluent in the local language and customs, which are often regarded as coarse, vulgar, offensive or abusive by many of the politicos and activists who parachute in looking for scraps of political capital. Cathy is intuitive, not only to the day-to-day concerns of locals, but to how people express those concerns and how the disparate challenges in the community can coalesce in outbursts of apathy, anger and, increasingly, racism and xenophobia.
‘The root of racism is austerity,’ says Cathy, unambiguously. ‘People on benefits turn against others on benefits. If you’re backed into a corner it brings out the worst in you. As human beings, we know how to make things better for each other but the economics of austerity stops all that. We’re under the cosh and we’re fighting for our lives.’
‘Fighting for their lives’ is not an exaggeration. For many people in Castlemilk, poverty will be the indirect cause of death. What makes Cathy so endearing is that her intelligence is not marshalled in service of an agenda to harness local anger for her own ends. Instead, Cathy represents a nurturing, caring force. She encourages people to rediscover their self-belief and take responsibility for the upkeep of their own community. Cathy recognises that capacity in the community, emotionally and socially, is very low and that there will be no meaningful change until people become more active, engaged and resilient. This resilience is not only about belief in political participation, but also about resisting the temptation to ascribe blame for poverty on the popular scapegoats of immigrants and drug addicts. Cathy is resigned to the reality that the age of austerity may continue for many years but is adamant that people stand up and be counted rather than see themselves as helpless victims: ‘We’re not saying we have all the answers. But we’re smart enough to figure it out. We believe in each other and we believe in the community.’
In one month alone, CAA ran a variety of campaigns and events that took a holistic view of community needs and aspirations. In Castlemilk, they understand that it takes more than chants of ‘Tory scum’ to bring about the sort of shift in thinking required to reorganise a community. Whether it be the food solidarity programmes (they don’t call them foodbanks here) aimed at reducing the social stigma associated with food poverty, leaflets designed to push back against racism and xenophobia, or seminars about the impact of bullying, CAA are charging on with a lack of concern for the agendas of political parties or activists jockeying for banner positions at anti-Trump rallies. Obviously everyone is welcome, but people have been warned about who is really running things around here.
In fact, talk of Trump and Brexit is viewed here as a distraction. At a recent screening of Ken Loach’s I, Daniel Blake, the award winning drama about the UK sanctions regime, Glasgow poet and activist Robert Fullertone – who writes the sort of poetry you won’t find in a school curriculum – clipped me around the proverbial ear for mentioning Donald Trump during a panel discussion. ‘Are you out there, Trump?’ he joked, his gesture towards the door perhaps alluding to the perma-tanned egotist’s role as a bogeyman for radical socialists and left-wing groups. Such groups, in recent years, have struggled to find their voice as nationalist folds have emerged across the fabric of society. But the rallies and stunts they often engage in to boost morale and visibility have created cynicism and irritation among the very working class people they are hoping to mobilise. The left is no longer assumed to be comprised exclusively of good guys. Fullertone, as eloquent a public speaker as you are likely to hear, believes the obsession with Trump and Brexit has become just another side-show that detracts from the struggle taking place in his community.
While many on the cultural left – who’ve come to dominate the liberal institutions of the arts, the media, the public and third sector as well as our universities – appear capable only of blaming right-wing conservatives for everything, increasing numbers in communities like Castlemilk are just as hacked off with the left as they are with everyone else. But, as well as this outward anger at the system, at those whom they feel ignored or abandoned by, there is a growing desire for self-scrutiny here too.
This urge to challenge themselves, as well as everyone else, is not only admirable but extremely practical. They understand that externalising blame for their circumstances while remaining inactive is simply just another way of handing their agency to the opportunists, sowing yet more seeds of apathy down the line. Castlemilk Against Austerity, while adamant that austerity politics is making life harder, doesn’t spin a ‘poor us’ narrative. Instead, as well as organising to resist the system, they challenge the community to examine its own shortcomings and false beliefs. They recognise the link between belief and action that creates the conditions for apathy, anger and prejudice. Whether it be blaming immigrants for social problems or paying lip-service to wanting change while sitting on your hands and doing nothing, caa are on the front line, calling out bullshit wherever it is found.
Addressing a packed hall in Kinning Park, Fullertone didn’t mince his words: ‘The problem with our politics right now is none of us are doing it. It’s no good enough to go up the road after this event, thrilled at what’s been said. You’ve got to go and do it. My back is killing me tonight, I’ve lost my inhaler and I’m short of breath, but that never stops me walking slow – to where the battle is.’
The battle is on his doorstep, on his street and up his close. In these communities, you’ll find the real foot soldiers in the fight against the far-right ideas breaking in as the cracks begin to show in these historically stressed communities. Here, if you want to challenge a racist it’s a little trickier than writing a blog or composing a condemnatory tweet – although all forms of resistance have their place. Here you can really put yourself in harm’s way, not only by challenging racists but by being consistently visible doing it. At grassroots level, it’s not as simple as instigating a social media witch-hunt against people who behave offensively. In Castlemilk, and areas like it, simply condemning people is not an option. Here, the war of ideas is messy and coarse and sometimes even shocking. People work out their differences in a way the poetry of the school curriculum hasn’t quite managed to capture. Robert Fullertone commands the room, not only as an orator, but as an elder, a sage and a leader. But in political circles, or in activist communities with a different entry level into the conversation, a guy like Robert may be regarded as a bit vulgar, rough around the edges or – my personal favourite – too angry.
But he speaks the sort of powerful, heartfelt rhetoric that gets you in the gut. He has a way with words that politicos across the spectrum have tried – and failed – to mimic. CAA, who launched a crowdfund to raise a modest £1,000 to fight the local election, will likely be shouted down or sneered at by various sections of the public. The xenophobes will think Cathy an apologist for the crimes of immigrants, regarded by many as undeserving of help or compassion while so many of the ‘indigenous’ population struggles. Others will see this attempt to enter the political arena as a distraction from a worthier pursuit, either party political or nationalist. And the rest will conclude it’s a waste of time and energy because things never change.
I suspect that when faced with the sheer power of the message Cathy and Robert are carrying, which is as much about challenging themselves and the community as it is about rallying against the system, then those who would sneer will come to bow their heads for fear of drawing their gaze. Down here, life is very real and people can cut you down with a shooting glance. As services are cut and apathy sets in, while the endless debate rages on in political circles, it’s the people like Cathy and Robert, who refuse lie down and play victims or allow their fellows to scapegoat the vulnerable, that show people there is another way to live.
They become the new centre of the community. Sadly, however, not every community has a Cathy or a Robert to fill the void.
24
Waiting for the Barbarians
WHEN YOU TAKE a strong dislike to someone, everything they say or do becomes irritating and suspect. Once you have decided, either due to something you’ve read, something you’ve been told or a direct interaction you’ve had, that you can no longer abide a certain someone, you begin subconsciously building your case against them. It might not even be a person but a place, an institution, an idea or a belief. No matter what form the source of your annoyance takes, you will hold it in a progressively lower regard and find common cause with others who’ve arrived at a similar conclusion. Those who appear to show sympathy, solidarity or support for the subject of your contempt will be exiled from your consideration and recategorised as mere extensions of the thing you’ve grown to hate. This is the emotional reality in which much of our current political debate is rooted. Given the sheer scale of bad faith exhibited, in debates on any number of issues, across the political spectrum, it’s a bit rich to pretend it’s only racists and xenophobes who are unfairly dehumanising sections of the population. I grew up calling Conservatives ‘scum’ and genuinely believing it, oblivious to the broad spectrum of Conservative opinion that exists. Others in my community claim ‘all cops are bastards’ – even the ones who run towards knife-wielding terrorists to protect the public. From a very young age, we are all inculcated into the mores of a tribe and adopt those values often without thought, later mistaking them for our own.
