The Big Issue at 35
In May this year the Big Issue published its annual ‘Impact Report’, a celebration, it said, of ’35 years of action and impact’. Its CEO claimed that, over its existence, it had ‘changed Britain’s high streets’ and provided ‘innovative earning, learning and social investment opportunities’, seen as ‘the key to breaking the cycle of poverty’. It had been ‘an exciting year’, the report stated, and now the Big Issue Group was moving forward ‘to build bold new solutions to tackle poverty and the deepening crisis amongst young people’. Its 35th Anniversary Dinner, held in March, raised over £200,000 and was attended by celebrities and politicians, most notably the Big Issue founder, Lord John Bird, and Angela Rayner, Housing Secretary in the current Labour government. Rayner was quoted as saying: ‘The Big Issue provides the dignity of a hand-up. That opportunity to become economically active, build confidence, develop new skills and a sense of dignity. That’s why I got involved in politics and it’s why I’m a supporter of the Big Issue’.
Yet, together with all these optimistic words, the report also points out that, even after 35 years of the magazine, destitution still affects 3.8 million people in the UK. In so doing, it echoes the frustration expressed in a recent article by John Bird that ‘three decades of the same conversation is exhausting’. Not that anyone would want to deny the report’s other claim that Big Issue activity has helped support many individuals to live less deprived, less demeaning lives. It has given them the magazine to sell, advised them on finding employment and even assisting some in starting their own small businesses. This, however, is a drop in a very large ocean where, given the extent of poverty and homelessness in the society we live in, for every individual helped out of a dire situation, there is another (and others) waiting to be helped. The report itself provides evidence of this with its figure of 3.8 million people living in destitution, representing a rise of 148 percent since 2017.
Looked at closely, the experience of the Big Issue very much mirrors that of the older charity organisation known as Shelter. Founded in 1966, Shelter pledged to get rid of homelessness within 10 years. But, since then, the problem it set out to tackle, together with the poverty that underlies it, has remained endemic. Shelter recently announced that 120,000 children in the UK are waking up homeless every day and that many thousands more are suffering housing and living conditions that make it impossible for them to live comfortable and fulfilling lives. There is no more talk of eliminating homelessness but rather a focus on the need to provide day-to-day assistance to those without a proper roof over their heads. Shelter even runs its own weekly lottery to raise funds for this. In a similar way the Big Issue report makes no mention of bringing homelessness to an end but sees its role as ‘ensuring our impact continues for generations to come’.
None of this is to demean the dedication or good faith of those involved – many on a voluntary basis – in seeking to alleviate the hardships of those suffering the worst effects of poverty. So we should not, for example, question the sincerity of Greg Hurst of the Centre for Homeless Impact when, in a recent Big Issue article, he wrote that ‘We must hold on to the belief that homelessness can be ended and look for evidence of proven or promising approaches that could be tried or tested right now’. But those seeing things in that light would at the same time do well to ask themselves why, regardless of their best efforts, the problems they are addressing not only never seem to go away but, depending on circumstances, may even get worse with the passage of time, so at best they are running fast to stand still. If they did ask the question, they might end up agreeing that poverty and homelessness are not caused by a dearth of houses or food being in short supply, and that, with the technologically efficient production systems that exist today, we could easily house, feed and clothe everyone on the planet. They might go even further and accept that the reason this never actually happens is that, in the system we live under, goods are produced and services are provided not to satisfy human need but to make profit for the small minority of humanity who own or control the vast majority of the wealth, while the rest of us can only have access to what the money in our pockets will buy.
For some, especially in the more technologically advanced countries, the existing set-up may offer a stable existence, even if at the cost of having to work on a day-to-day basis in employment we may not like or conditions that make it unpleasant or insecure. But for others, in particular those who have the most poorly paid or insecure jobs or no employment at all, things are far worse, often a constant round of worry, instability and hopelessness. And no matter how much time and energy is put into trying to rectify this by the Big Issue, Shelter and other such well-meaning organisations, their efforts can do no more than scratch the surface of the problems they would like to solve. John Bird got it right – perhaps inadvertently – when, in a Big Issue article, he wrote that ‘ideas of ending poverty are stuck in the realm of fantasy’.
So while the Big Issue Group’s stated ambition to ‘build a future where every individual can thrive’ is nothing if not admirable and one socialists would share, in today’s system of ‘can’t pay, can’t have’ that we call capitalism, it is frankly unachievable. It can only realistically be envisioned in the society socialists campaign for, in which nothing is bought or sold, production is for use not profit and there is free access for everyone to all goods and services.
HKM
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