Exploitation of the poor verges on evil

I am glad this week’s The Observer chose to include a feature about the shocking and shaming scenes of abject neediness in Burnley. This was a follow up to street Pastor Fleming’s short film Poverty and the Pandemic: Burnley which has been showing on BBC News Channel.

In Harriet Sherwood’s Observer piece -  Exploitation of poor verges on evil - she went further than describing how desperately poor some areas of Burnley are. She referenced the increase in the work of The Trussell Trust and its food banks and the evil of loan sharks. But it continued to shine a spotlight on the very poor today.

I taught needy children for over thirty years but even that didn’t prepare me for Fleming’s film.It was harrowing in its depiction of devastated lives. It left me weeping and as troubled as I was after seeing Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home when I was a mere ten-year-old. No one can forget the scenes of Cathy living in a condemned house, being torched in a caravan nor being forced to give up her children to the authorities as she was homeless and could no longer care for them.

After seeing Poverty and the Pandemic and emailing family and friends I managed to get some of us to immediately send donations to Fleming’s Church on the Street fund. More will come. I felt impelled to act.

It was impossible to ignore the Dickensian plight of Burnley’s desperately poor. ‘Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?’ asked Dickens’ Scrooge upon hearing that it was at Christmas, especially, that need was felt. Yes. Lock ‘em up. That was Scrooge’s solution. But how are things any better now than in 1840s London? 

After years of austerity Britain, chronic low pay, a lack of council housing, erosion of the welfare state and benefits plus increased financial insecurity for many how can our poorest be anything but desperate? Especially when they can’t work owing to lockdown. Their story needed to be told and The Observer helped.

Lockdown,shut down, shut out.

‘But they would rather die than face the work house’ said one charity worker to Scrooge.

‘Let them be quick about it and reduce the surplus population,’ Scrooge replies.