‘Tis The Season

I know its not Christmas (except according to the commercial calendar) but it is getting cold and it is the season when many of us think about the less fortunate.

During the recent snow, volunteers were out with soup, hats, scarves and sleeping bags for Liverpool’s homeless.

This probably happened in other cities as well, which is great to hear, to hear that people have kindness in their hearts. This doesn’t just happen at this time of year, homeless charities work all year round, as homelessness is a year-round issue.

This was discussed on BBC late night radio recently, and lots of listeners were heartbroken by the stories they heard and many of them said a similar thing.

“If we all just gave a bit, all helped a bit, this wouldn’t be a problem, we could fix it”

This is partly true. Partly. I know a homeless lad, I see him outside the Lidl and when he’s there, I give him a smoke and we have a little chat.

I get him something to eat or drink, I’ve given him suncream in the summer (heatstroke can kill you as much as the cold if you’re outside all the time)

Once I bought him some iced coffee, and he gave me some of his food. He told me that people give him food all day, and he can’t keep it all in his tent, because it’ll go off.

I was grateful for the food, as I’m not rich myself and then I realised something I hadn’t thought about before.

I had less food than a homeless man, but I had more homes than him.

Homelessness is a much bigger issue than a lack of a home. It’s actually part of our economic system. People living on the streets obviously don’t have homes to go to, more than likely have no regular income and often have mental health issues and drug/alcohol addictions.

Homelessness can’t be fixed just by “giving”. Nearly anyone can become homeless overnight. If you don’t own your home outright, you’re already one step away from homelessness.

You could lose your job, jobs are less secure than they used to be, even in essential industries such as steelmaking.

If you have a home and a job, you could still have a mental illness or an addiction, which leaves you only two steps away.

People don’t become addicts or lose jobs through choice, it’s down to the unfulfilling life of working for somebody elses gain.

It’s down to capitalism.

Our NHS struggles to deal with addiction and mental health cases, so they’re now tendered out to private trusts, charities or whatever you want to call them.

Houses for rent are owned privately, or by Housing Associations (often wrongly assumed to be council houses) Houses for sale are owned by a bank for a long part of the time that the occupier lives there.

Employment is never guaranteed under capitalism, not even in large established companies, or even working for the state itself.

A lot has also been said about illegal immigrants being treated better than our homeless. Charity Begins At Home, We Want Our Country Back etc. But a cruel system such as ours would not treat “our” homeless any better than an immigrant. The country has never been ours, the workers of Britain, and if our government wanted to help British homeless people, it could have done it by now.

The ruling class need to make enemies for us workers.

It will be asylum seekers one day, then it will be “our” homeless the next.

We really do need to help the homeless, and the poor worker, and the well off worker. This could be any of you reading this, no matter your political views.

Kindness is a great thing. Never stop being kind, but realise that the best way to help is to change our economic system so that it *always* benefits those of us who can, or could sustain it.

Chris Haws,

November 2024