Struggling on the road to Wigan Pier
80 YEARS AFTER ORWELL’S BOOK & THE POOR ARE STILL..
THE man is sobbing into filthy, scarred hands, his body heaving. It’s a terrible sound. He is sitting on a plastic chair in a cramped portacabin on the edge of a car park, surrounded by empty crates.
“When did you last eat?” volunteer Dennis Spicer, 77, asks. He hands him a cheese sandwich, and tea in a polystyrene cup. The man starts eating the sandwich immediately, but his hands shake too much to hold the tea.
“I don’t know. Days ago. My money was cut off 10 days ago.”
“What happened to your face?” The man’s fingers flutter towards the bloody line across his hollow cheek. “Selfharming. I was going to kill myself. But I came here.”
The emergency box of food given to the man in that tiny foodbank in a Staffordshire market town is just one of 1.2 million handed out across the country in the past year by the Trussell Trust, figures released yesterday show. The charity is also now giving out about 10 million meals a year in the UK, the world’s sixth richest country. As Tory austerity continues, the figures show a 6.64% increase in help given to families struggling with low wages, high living costs and welfare cuts, including the Government’s flagship new Universal Credit programme. During 2017, the Mirror will be looking at the human cost of austerity through our Wigan Pier Project, marking 80 years since the publication of George Orwell’s book. We will meet people struggling with poverty along the route Orwell took as he investigated poverty in the north for The Road To Wigan Pier. A dedicated website will tell stories from the places he wrote about, comparing the hardship he saw in the 1930s with today.
In our journey so far – and in four years of the Real Britain column – we have been to many foodbanks. But today’s visit in Staffordshire, which Orwell passed through on his way north, is the most harrowing yet.
The queue has been around the block all day with many people in a state of total destitution.
Gulf War veteran Martin Pearson, 50, tells us he has nothing to eat until he gets paid in three days time.
He is one of 900,000 people on zerohours contracts. And, like one in eight workers, he is struggling to survive, despite being in employment.
Martin has come on foot. He can’t buy a bus pass when he doesn’t know what hours he will get each week. When he gets work, he leaves home at 4am to walk seven miles to the plastic moulding factory to arrive by 6am. He says: “It’s hard in winter, or now, when it’s raining. After work, I’m knackered on the way home.”
He sends some of his wages to his son, and shares his food with his dog. This week, the agency has cut his shifts. He says: “It feels wrong that I’m 50 and I’ve worked since I was 16 and still can’t always feed myself.” He served
I’ve worked since I was 16 and yet I still can’t always feed myself MARTIN PEARSON WAR VET WHO NEEDS FOODBANK
for 15 years in the Armed Forces, yet must rely on charity. Orwell saw the same thing with working-class men who had fought in the First World War.
In his Wigan Pier diary, he told of the many people he met who were unable to survive on poor relief, or to convince the Means Test that they needed help.
Today, we have a welfare state but we hear from Martin, 52, an engineer who was made redundant and was forced to apply for Universal Credit. It is a new benefit with a cruel twist – you get nothing for the first six weeks.
He says: “I’ve been a qualified engineer for 37 years. Never signed on the
dole, never been in debt. At the age of 52, I’ve struggled to get a new job. I applied for Universal Credit and was told I would have to wait for six to eight weeks for any money. Who can live on nothing for two months?
“Without the foodbank, I honestly don’t know where I’d be. I was living on nothing. I did get very depressed and distressed, but the people at the foodbank pulled me out of the mire.”
Martin now volunteers at his foodbank to help others. This month, Universal Credit starts a new rollout in more towns and cities.
In Staffordshire, heavy rain is falling. We double back to Penkridge, where the “frouzy” teashop where Orwell fled the weather is now a bakery.
Across the road, inside Dickens of a Teashop,
Ian and Joanne Marston are serving up egg and chips. Ian, 60, was a foundryman for decades, but says local industry is dying. He and Joanne, 50, talk of the pace of change – 200 new houses in a town that was once just three families and now has a population of 12,000.
At Penkridge Market, auctioneer Mike Williams, 66, the third generation of his family to run the market, says: “Penkridge has changed a lot since Mr Orwell was here. I’m not sure he’d recognise it.” A once thriving agricultural area is now a commuter town.
Back at the Trussell Trust portacabin foodbank, Martin has gone, but the man with the cut face is still sitting on the plastic chair as Dennis, a retired social worker, speaks softly into his mobile.
The man in the chair sips tea, telling us: “I used to be a railway engineer, before I got ill. Now I’m in this place where I think, ‘Shall I kill myself or go stealing?’ That’s the two options I’ve got.” He shows me paperwork that says he is fit for work despite severe mental health problems. He says: “I’m going through mandatory reconsideration so I’ve nothing to eat for three weeks until then. I’ve moved house and I’ve no money to get to the pharmacy for my prescription so I’ve gone really bad. “My electricity’s cut off. I’ve been lying on my bed freezing, too scared to leave the house.” Dennis tells him: “I’ve got you a doctor’s appointment. “I’ll take you there myself in a minute. We’ll give you some food.” He looks at the man’s address, and tells him: “I know that place. It’s not a good place. “We need to find you somewhere better to live.” This is what Orwell found: extraordinary acts of kindness against the organised brutality of the state.