In Derry and Strabane, Covid-19, and Brexit aside, levels of poverty are and have been increasing steadily. Cuts to welfare spending, paltry benefits, stagnation of wages, lack of employment, insecure employment, a low wage economy, higher inflation, increases in rent and lack of housing or affordable housing is taking its toll.
People we help routinely feel shame and suffer a loss of dignity when they find themselves in circumstances that are often through no fault of their own. This is fed by public policy and tabloid media who peddle the view that people are personally responsible for the circumstances in which they find themselves.
Hunger has been normalised; food banks pepper the landscape. It is not good enough that hunger is now an accepted part of an everyday living experience. Food is purchased by government departments, to be given to those in food poverty. But it is not a scarcity of food that is the problem, it is a lack of basic income to afford to purchase it, and to live with dignity and wellbeing.
Systems are propped up that make poor people poorer and withdraw necessary income from those who most need it. There is untold damage to our society as a result. Children are denied participation in everyday activities with their peers due to their poverty. Things must change.
As a backdrop, the news is filled with talk of a never-ending peace process. I have seen no peace for the poor or the working class. The violence of poverty is devastating. There has been many a career made from processing peace yet very few of the vulnerable in our society have experienced a material improvement in their circumstances.
Brexit looms large and there are murmurings of a referendum on Irish Unity. A ‘new agreed island’ is the softened or acceptable language. Agreed by who? The British? The established political class? An aspiring elite in civic society? The financiers and the banks? Most likely all of them. But what of the ordinary man and woman? Will they be allowed to sit in assembly to self-determine their future, and that of generations thereafter?
In this new phase or discussion, the debate is controlled. Let no one talk of ‘The Republic’. They fear to speak of Easter Week. God forbid that the new dawn would be run in the interests of ordinary people.
⏩An edited version of this interview appeared in the Derry News on 21st December 2020
Hunger has been normalised; food banks pepper the landscape. It is not good enough that hunger is now an accepted part of an everyday living experience. Food is purchased by government departments, to be given to those in food poverty. But it is not a scarcity of food that is the problem, it is a lack of basic income to afford to purchase it, and to live with dignity and wellbeing.
Systems are propped up that make poor people poorer and withdraw necessary income from those who most need it. There is untold damage to our society as a result. Children are denied participation in everyday activities with their peers due to their poverty. Things must change.
As a backdrop, the news is filled with talk of a never-ending peace process. I have seen no peace for the poor or the working class. The violence of poverty is devastating. There has been many a career made from processing peace yet very few of the vulnerable in our society have experienced a material improvement in their circumstances.
Brexit looms large and there are murmurings of a referendum on Irish Unity. A ‘new agreed island’ is the softened or acceptable language. Agreed by who? The British? The established political class? An aspiring elite in civic society? The financiers and the banks? Most likely all of them. But what of the ordinary man and woman? Will they be allowed to sit in assembly to self-determine their future, and that of generations thereafter?
In this new phase or discussion, the debate is controlled. Let no one talk of ‘The Republic’. They fear to speak of Easter Week. God forbid that the new dawn would be run in the interests of ordinary people.
⏩An edited version of this interview appeared in the Derry News on 21st December 2020
