{"id":752,"date":"2020-12-01T19:06:58","date_gmt":"2020-12-01T19:06:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=130213"},"modified":"2020-12-01T19:06:58","modified_gmt":"2020-12-01T19:06:58","slug":"i-spoke-to-impoverished-families-in-1975-and-little-has-changed-since-then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/01\/i-spoke-to-impoverished-families-in-1975-and-little-has-changed-since-then\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI spoke to impoverished families in 1975 and little has changed since then\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>A British family from the film Smashing Kids<\/em>, 1975. Photograph: John Garrett<\/p>\n

John Pilger interviewed Irene Brunsden in Hackney, east London about only being able to feed her two-year-old a plate of cornflakes in 1975. Now he sees nervous women queueing at foodbanks with their children as it\u2019s revealed 600,000 more kids are in poverty now than in 2012.<\/em><\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

When I first reported on child poverty in Britain, I was struck by the faces of children I spoke to, especially the eyes. They were different: watchful, fearful.<\/p>\n

In Hackney, in 1975, I filmed Irene Brunsden\u2019s family. Irene told me she gave her two-year-old a plate of cornflakes. \u201cShe doesn\u2019t tell me she\u2019s hungry, she just moans. When she moans, I know something is wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow much money do you have in the house? I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cFive pence,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n

Irene said she might have to take up prostitution, \u201cfor the baby\u2019s sake\u201d. Her husband Jim, a truck driver who was unable to work because of illness, was next to her. It was as if they shared a private grief.<\/p>\n

This is what poverty does. In my experience, its damage is like the damage of war; it can last a lifetime, spread to loved ones and contaminate the next generation. It stunts children, brings on a host of diseases and, as unemployed Harry Hopwood in Liverpool told me, \u201cit\u2019s like being in prison\u201d.<\/p>\n

This prison has invisible walls. When I asked Harry\u2019s young daughter if she ever thought that one day she would live a life like better-off children, she said unhesitatingly: \u201cNo\u201d.<\/p>\n

What has changed 45 years later?  At least one member of an impoverished family is likely to have a job \u2014 a job that denies them a living wage. Incredibly, although poverty is more disguised, countless British children still go to bed hungry and are ruthlessly denied opportunities..<\/p>\n

What has not<\/em> changed is that poverty is the result of a disease that is still virulent yet rarely spoken about \u2013 class.<\/p>\n

Study after study shows that the people who suffer and die early from the diseases of poverty brought on by a poor diet, sub-standard housing and the priorities of the political elite and its hostile \u201cwelfare\u201d officials \u2014 are working people. In 2020, one in three preschool British children suffers like this.<\/p>\n

In making my recent film, The Dirty War on the NHS<\/em>, it was clear to me that the savage cutbacks to the NHS and its privatisation by the Blair, Cameron, May and Johnson governments had devastated the vulnerable, including many NHS workers and their families. I interviewed one low-paid NHS worker who could not afford her rent and was forced to sleep in churches or on the streets.<\/p>\n

At a food bank in central London, I watched young mothers looking nervously around as they hurried away with old Tesco bags of food and washing powder and tampons they could no longer afford, their young children holding on to them. It is no exaggeration that at times I felt I was walking in the footprints of Dickens.<\/p>\n

Boris Johnson has claimed that 400,000 fewer children are living in poverty since 2010 when the Conservatives came to power. This is a lie, as the Children\u2019s Commissioner has confirmed. In fact, more than 600,000 children have fallen into<\/em> poverty since 2012; the total is expected to exceed 5 million. This, few dare say, is a class war on children.<\/p>\n

Old Etonian Johnson is maybe a caricature of the born-to-rule class; but his \u201celite\u201d is not the only one. All the parties in Parliament, notably if not especially Labour \u2013 like much of the bureaucracy and most of the media \u2014 have scant if any connection to the \u201cstreets\u201d: to the world of the poor: of the \u201cgig economy\u201d: of battling a system of Universal Credit that can leave you without a penny and in despair.<\/p>\n

Last week, the prime minister and his \u201celite\u201d showed where their priorities lay. In the face of the greatest health crisis in living memory when Britain has the highest Covid-19 death toll in Europe and poverty is accelerating as the result of a punitive \u201causterity\u201d policy, he announced \u00a316.5 billion for \u201cdefence\u201d. This makes Britain, whose military bases cover the world as if the empire still existed, the highest military spender in Europe.<\/p>\n

And the enemy? The real one is poverty and those who impose it and perpetuate it.<\/p>\n

\u2022 This is an abridged version of an article published by the Daily Mirror<\/em>, London.
\u2022 John Pilger\u2019s 1975 film, Smashing Kids, can be viewed at Smashing Kids<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2020 at 11:06am and is filed under Boris Johnson<\/a>, COVID-19<\/a>, Housing\/Homelessness<\/a>, Hunger<\/a>, Poverty<\/a>, United Kingdom<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A British family from the film Smashing Kids, 1975. Photograph: John Garrett John Pilger interviewed Irene Brunsden in Hackney, east London about only being able to feed her\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189,304,352,164,4,34,200],"tags":[353,317,354,169,42,325],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":753,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions\/753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}