There was something a little surreal about our January in
The First Base Agency. Ten years of experience suggested that there would be a
lull in people coming through the door and once again this proved to be the
case. Why? I haven’t the faintest idea. This seasonal lull has never made any
remote sense to me. Outside the endless rain cascaded down and all the ‘For
Sale’ signs on Buccleuch St looked forlorn. The town was grey and deserted. The
buses were still never more than a third full. Advertising billboards showing
places bathed in sunshine looked as out of place and ridiculous as ever.
And instead of our usual 450 emergency food parcels we doled
out just under 400. The evening news carried breathless tales of Britain
Really?
Was an unexpected 1.9% GDP spike really the reason for the
first easing back in the demand for emergency food in many months? There seemed
to be almost no logic in such a conclusion. After all, the experts seemed
pretty well united in the conclusion that most of the much trumpeted 1.9% growth was
down to Russian oligarchs hoovering up over priced houses in the South East.
Could the influx of a few billion dodgy roubles really put food on the table
for the struggling of Dumfries ?
Well maybe it could. I don’t pretend to have the faintest
understanding of economics.
A better clue seemed to be found in the fact that there didn’t
seem to be so many people coming in with sanction letters from the Job Centre.
This certainly made more sense than any ripple down effect that might have been caused
by the owner of an Aluminium factory in Novosibirsk
shelling out for an over priced Georgian pile in Belgravia .
So what was the deal?
Had the high and mighty in Whitehall
discovered some unexpected compassion whilst hurtling down the crystalline
slopes of St Moritz
People do not need emergency food parcels in Britain as a result of some natural disaster
like the typhoon in the Philippines London offices take the decision to take away the incomes
of people getting by on £60 a week in places where aluminium magnates from Novosibirsk
The taps get turned on the taps get turned off. For whatever
reason, the word from Whitehall
Maybe this was where 1.9% GDP growth actually could have an
effect on rain drenched Dumfries . Maybe the
bean counters had suddenly found some light at the end of the fiscal tunnel and
the need the bash the poor didn’t so desperate any more…
But night follows day and January becomes February and all
of a sudden business as usual was very much resumed. The first Monday of the
month saw nearly 30 people come in through the door looking for something to
eat.
Two thirds of them had been newly sanctioned.
The taps had been switched back off.
Why? I guess there must have been a degree of fear in those Whitehall corridors that a few pesky elements of media
might have been warming up for a batch of ‘Foodbank Britain
Well would it?
Better instead to send the word down the chain to leave them
be for a month and pay them their benefits. Let things ride for a while. Get
January out of the way and then start cracking the whip again. Come February,
all of those ‘hard working families’ we hear so much about will be ready for
some good old fashioned ‘hate the poor’ stories in the Redtops. In February all
of those ‘hard working families’ will have bills landing on the mat from their
credit card providers listing the sobering truth of all that money they
borrowed to make Christmas the way the tele tells us it should be.
So last week over a hundred parcels headed out of the door
and normal service was resumed.
And the cracks just get wider.
Here’s one to chew on. Two young lasses pushed a drenched
pram through the door. The older of the pair was in her early twenties. The
younger must have been fifteen or so and she held the hand of a toddler. She
hung back and as the water dripped from her coat, she had the look of a refugee
from a Balkan war. The toddler was still and mute. The pusher of the pram came
to counter and presented a soggy letter from the Job Centre. Brief details. A
family of three. A mother and two children. One four and one four months. No
money.
No mention of the Balkan refugee with the hollow stare and
pale cheeks.
Why?
Sanctioned.
How long? A month.
And the problems ran deeper than food. No baby milk. No
nappies. Oh. And a mere 66p in the meter.
Had she applied for emergency money from the Scottish
Welfare Fund?
Yes, but no joy. The Scottish Welfare Fund has replaced
Crisis Loans as the place of last resort. It represents the last strands of the
safety net of the State. Beyond the Scottish Welfare Fund there is nothing.
Beyond the Scottish Welfare Fund is the Third World .
She told me that she had applied, but there would be no more
money because she had already received three payments in the calendar year. And
these are indeed the rules to be found in the small print. You are allowed to
reach crisis point three times in any calendar year and after that you are on
your own.
Does having a four month old baby with neither nappies nor
milk make any difference? No a jot. The computer says no, and that is
conclusively that.
We did what we could. We handed over bags of food and some
packs of nappies that had been donated by one of the churches. We had no baby
milk, but we dug out three jars of baby food. We suggested a fellow charity
which might have been able to help out with £20 for the meter. And then they
headed back out into the cascading rain leaving a memory of stretched
translucent skin and the lost eyes of a refugee.
Decision time.
Like all charities we have policies to stick to. The welfare
of children supercedes everything else. If we are worried that a child might be
at risk, we are obligated to make the call no matter what. These policies are
of course designed to guide us when we work with families where addiction
rages. And from time to time we have had to make the call.
So what about a four month old with neither nappies nor milk
and only 66p in the meter? Does that constitute at risk? Especially when the
family has reached the point of three strikes and you’re out in the eyes of the
Scottish Welfare Fund?
How ill can a four month old get in an unheated house in the
freezing damp of a Scottish night in February?
Pretty ill I guess.
So I made the call.
I was passed around the houses for half an hour or so and
experienced the joys of all manner of canned music care of the Council. In the
end a duty social worker took the call and took the details. I could tell she
didn’t want to. I couldn’t blame her. She obviously knew only too well that her
department no longer has a budget to provide heat, light, nappies and milk.
They have only one string left in their bow: remove the child and find a foster
home.
A hundred years ago a young British Officer called Wilfred
Owen penned a poem in which he strove to force the generals to take a glimpse
of the hell and carnage they were causing with the orders they sent to the
front from their luxurious Chateaus far away from the mud of the trenches. He
described following a cart filled with the corpses of victims from a gas
attack.
‘If in some smothering dreams you too could
pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.’
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.’
Dulce et decorum
est…
It is sweet and
right to die for your country
I put the phone
down on the table and thought it would be a good thing if one of those Whitehall
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