Springburn: Photograph by Islay McLeod
As Billy Connolly once said in an introduction to the Welly Boot song, ‘It used to be the great mark of poverty in Partick: wellies in the summer.’
The song itself, by George McEwan, says:
Noo Edward Heath and Wilson, they havna made a hit,
They’re ruining this country, mair than just a bit…
Fast forward half a century and we find the same old same old: politicians ruining this country more than just a bit, and bringing back the walk of shame – children wearing wellies in summer.
Charity shop clothes and a gnawing hunger are now everyday facts of life for a fifth of our children.
My mother worked in child welfare before the second world war and thought that her generation had crossed rickets off the list of diseases that maimed and killed children. She would have been horrified to read that this bone-destroying condition is making a comeback in 2013.
Bowly legs and callipers had become history when she died at the end of the 1990s – but now rickets is a big enough problem to prompt campaigners to ask the Scottish Government to prescribe Vitamin D for pregnant women and children. Lack of sunshine may not be helping, but I’m more inclined to believe that poverty is the major culprit. If you can’t afford to put a decent tea on the table for your kids, the sun could split the sky from now till the October holiday and they’ll still be at risk of everything from the runs to rickets.
And in Scotland, 20% of our children are living in poverty. One in five. The stereotypical image, of course, puts those children into inner cities and peripheral schemes – Glasgow, Dundee, bits of Edinburgh. Reality puts them everywhere.
According to the End Child Poverty Campaign, in the Western Isles and Kintyre 8% of children live in struggling families. In Mid Argyll, where the presence of council offices, a hospital and small industry should mean more jobs, the figure is 12%. In Dunoon, once selling itself as the Scottish Riviera, the national average is matched. One in five.
So instead of a housing scheme in Lanarkshire, imagine a small rural school with, say, 28 kids, on the roll. With statistics like these, half a dozen of them will be from out-of-work families or families surviving on work tax credits.
Please don’t give me that stuff about there being no ‘real’ poverty in this country. A telly in the corner of the room and a pay-as-you-go mobile phone don’t make you rich in our society. Today’s disadvantaged children wear cheap trainers and clothes sewn in Bangladesh – poor kids making clothes for poor kids.
The stigma of poverty is no less 85 years on, and the effects on physical, emotional and educational well being are no less cruel. It is fashionable these days to scoff at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but whether you live in Africa or Argyll, if you don’t have the basic needs of food, water, warmth, rest, security and comfort, you will find it very difficult to move on to the psychological and self-fulfilment needs that are essential to our development as contributing human beings. And to be unashamedly political, the Westminster government is, through its bedroom tax and its curbs on welfare and unemployment benefits, making it increasingly difficult to achieve even the bottom layers of Maslow’s pyramid.
Argyll Community Housing Association (ACHA), the local social housing landlord, says low income families are worst affected by the bedroom tax, losing them an average of £50 a month through Mr Osborne’s recent wheeze. George and Call-me-Dave may blow fifty quid on a round of drinks without batting an eyelid. For the low wage earner, losing £50 means eating or heating choices.
ACHA’s chief executive says that the really vulnerable are running up rent arrears. Does that mean there’ll be evictions? Prosecutions? Unaffordable fines that will lead to prison sentences for non-payment? Where will that leave the kids? And call me mathematically challenged if you wish, but how is that going to aid the country’s ailing finances?
I have a suspicion that most politicians will never have to decide whether to pay the electricity bill or feed the children. I also suspect that on every visit Iain Duncan Smith has made to Easterhouse, folk have put the kettle on and brought out the best mugs, giving him the impression that all was well with the world and that health benefits could therefore be cut with impunity. But nothing this government has done has been free from unpleasant consequences, and topping the bill is this breaking of childhood on the wheel of benefit cuts and bedroom taxes.
Our children do have the Geneva Convention on the Rights of the Child on their side. They also have the teachings of all the main religions rooting for them.
Muslim teaching says:
Did He not find you an orphan and give you shelter? And He found you wandering, and He gave you guidance. And He found you in need, and made you independent. Therefore, treat not the orphan with harshness, nor drive away a petitioner (unheard). But the bounty of the Lord – rehearse and proclaim!
(Qur’an 93:6-11)
Followers of the Christian faith read in Matthew:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…
One in five – the number of children that this government is depriving of food, drink, shelter and a decent education. We’re all in this together? I think not, Mr Osborne.
