Lowborn

It is half a year since I wrote anything on this blog.  Is anyone still out there??!  Apologies if anyone (!) has been looking out for my musings.

I wasn't in a great place at the beginning of the year and then it all just felt too overwhelming.  I didn't seem to be able to write concisely or in a reasonable fashion.  Brexit, Trump, austerity, the climate, it all just felt too much.  So I concentrated more on trying to stay happy in my small place in the world.

However, I am just reading a book which has spurred me into blogging action finally.  It is called Lowborn and is by a brilliant writer called Kerry Hudson.  You may have seen it around - in the UK for sure - as it is hotly tipped for all sorts of non-fiction prizes.

Kerry Hudson was brought up be a mainly single mother who dragged her to towns in all parts of the UK.  She says she attended 9 primary schools, for example  She experienced a grinding, seemingly never-ending kind of poverty which has, I believe, rarely been written about in this country - for the reasons that she details from the beginning of the book.  Namely being in a class who are considered worthless and feckless.  People rarely drag themselves out and even more rarely discuss their pasts if they do. 

Reading her story is an incredibly sobering experience.  I would like to think of myself as a caring person.  Someone who tries to be aware of differences between people.  To be sensitive.  To give what I can when I can.  But reading this book makes you all too aware how almost impossible it is to offer much respite to those living such lives unless you could house them, give them bank accounts, give them jobs.  Simply the act of sending your own child to school well-fed and in a clean uniform gives daily pain to those who are hungry and whose uniforms are too small, too dirty.

And then how much difference would that make in the end because so much is ingrained in terms of lack of parenting, alcohol and substance abuse, casual violence and abuse.  The cycle goes on and is difficult to break.  Yet Kerry Hudson came through and others have too.  There are ways to turn this section of society around and as I have argued many times on this blog, the UK is not a poor country - despite what many in government would have us believe.  There is money, a great deal of money.  But there is no desire to make any real change.  Thousands and thousands of people are living below the poverty line.  Daily forced to choose between food or heat, bills or school shoes, etc etc ad infinitum.  Food banks report that they can barely cope with the onset of school holidays - the loss of free school meals for six weeks simply breaks the delicate finances of many families.  

This is the twenty first century, people.  Weren't we all supposed to be equal and disease-free and living in high tech, violence-free communities by now?  Some the most terrifying parts of Kerry's book are when she revisits the towns that she lived in during her childhood.  Most have not changed, many are worse off than thirty years ago.  No wonder so many of such places voted for the grotesque clowns who promised that the EU was the root of all their troubles and that leaving the EU would bring endless cash injections.  'Beware men bearing gifts'...

Read Lowborn, I urge you.  It will probably make you weep.  But I hope it spurs you to action too.  Protest.  Donate.  But most of all, start trying to think differently about why someone might be where they, looking like they do or behaving in a certain way.  

Persist and resist

As any regular readers will know (if there are any!), I didn't post last week.  I just couldn't seem to summon any energy.  As the summer approached, I had begun to feel I was running on empty.

But then I saw a post by Alan Cumming on Instagram (@alancummingsnaps).  It was in relation to the recent Pride events but his post talked of all the struggles going in the world at the moment.  The racism, sexism, religious intolerance.  Here is a little of what he said:

We live in scary times.  It's hard to maintain the level of outrage with so many outrageous things happening daily, hourly, and the fight can seem exhausting.  the other day a wise woman posited that 'persist' is as important, if not more, than 'resist' as a mantra.

This really strikes a chord with me.  And not just for persistence in the political and social struggles.  I have struggled for many years with depression.  Relatively low level but enough to cause me periods of real difficulty.  I know far better now when these are upon me but it can be hard to regain the upper hand.

But when you hear about the everyday struggles that so many people are dealing with, you feel bad for not coping better with your own somewhat cushy existence.  For example, in The Times magazine on Saturday (15 July), there was a piece about the Fitzmaurice family.  The headline was My husband can only communicate with his eyes, via a computer.  If that doesn't put teenaged tantrums, constant clearing up woes and general 'being fed up' into context, I don't know what will.  Ruth Fitzmaurice has a husband with Motor Neurone Disease and five children under twelve.  (I will definitely be reading her book I Found My Tribe.)

Persistance is something which we often forget we have.  We in the developed world often have such comfortable existences that when we see refugees on the oceans, people displaced in war zones,  people dealing with extreme poverty or illness, it is hard to believe that we ourselves could ever survive such ordeals.  We wonder aloud at the resilience of others.

Because the need for persistence and resilience has been taken away.  We don't have to hunt or gather.  Our problems are of a different nature.  But we, as humans, do have the resilience.  If pushed, we would all do whatever it took to survive for the longest possible time.  Our ancestors performed miracles with a lot less creature comforts around them.

So how about we channel some of that dormant persistence and resilience into continuing the fight for a better world.  And for myself, I will also be channelling some of that into feeling better and into counting my blessings a bit more often (even whilst arguing with the teen and the tween!).

Our Common Humanity

 I have not been posting on this blog for a few weeks because of PC problems and, ironically, family issues.  However, this morning, reading yet more social media and newspaper comment about "The Migrants", I felt I had to start writing again.

Back in February, after listening to a BBC Radio 4 programme, I wrote a piece on this blog called Do We Know Who We Are? relating to immigration and the lack of thought given to people's personal circumstances in the reporting of the situation in the Mediterranean.
 
Today, when I looked at Twitter, there is now a hashtag in use called #MigrantsCrisis.  The headlines on certain tabloids and social media seem determined to make it appear that we are living under threat of faceless zombie hordes.  Apparently they are "swarming", travelling in "packs".  Surely this is the stuff of science fiction?  Should we now be arming our borders with ray guns?
 
On the BBC Radio 2 Jeremy Vine Programme yesterday, he finished a discussion about the Calais troubles with a line from a listener which referred to "our common humanity".  And I believe this is what is missing from our attitudes towards "the migrants".
 
The terminology being used by commentators, social media and broadcasters is dehumanising.  Purposely so.  They are conjuring up nightmarish pictures of these dangerous hordes at the gates of civilisation.
 
But how civilised are we, if we cannot see the common humanity before us?  How would this situation be reported if it was "hard working families" who were being "denied their rights", who were leaving European shores for sanctuary in the Middle East and being turned back or even dying at sea?  Would those families be faceless migrants, zombies threatening another country's way of life?
 
I believe that one of the reasons slavery lasted so long was the dehumanisation of the "cargoes".  Black Africans were lesser beings, therefore could be treated accordingly.  Attitudes still plaguing race relations the world over today.
 
As I noted in my February piece, those in glass houses and all that.  Very few of us can be sure that we are not descended from immigrants to the UK.  Whether that be from Vikings, Normans, European refugees, people from the ex-colonies, Ireland, wherever.  The British are a tapestry not an immaculate piece of finest linen.  The thread of that tapestry is humanity.