In post-riot south-east London, people share their views on government and public sector cuts:
On Deptford High Street, I’ve been spending time with a man called Roy*. Roy, 58, is a sociable, articulate and intelligent man – a live wire, even, chatting and giggling as he leads me in and out of shops (“I want to buy a phone which bounces” – he’s dropped a few phones, but has a wad of cash for a new one), rolling and sharing cigarettes, and arguing the insurrectionist viewpoint when shopowners tell him to smoke outside.
He describes himself an anarchist. He’s brilliant at it – he genuinely couldn’t give a stuff what anyone else thinks, or even what sort of mood the high street’s many coppers are in. Every now and then, he shouts out “bring me cannabis! I want cannabis!” for laughs. Whenever he’s asked for his views on government, he yells “for king and country! FUCK-ING CUNT-RY! Get it?” Quite a few people on the street get it and a lot of them like it. The four or five people sharing our café table this morning all join in the chant. Roy’s view is that “there is no need for government. There is no need for police.” He wears a whistle on a ribbon round his neck and, from time to time, he stands up and blows it with a lot of enthusiasm. He is a tonic in many respects: a welcome reminder that obliging behaviour is overrated, particularly at the moment. If you’re going to be an anarchist, do it like Roy does. Spread the joy.
Roy is a regular user of public services – the NHS, mostly. He’s just a day or two out of an inpatient unit in one of the big southeast London hospitals and he says that he has to report back tomorrow. He was first sectioned about 20 years ago and has been in and out of inpatient units ever since. He explains that his most recent sectioning came about because he was caught in the middle of Westminster “bashing at the church doors and I was [shouting at them] Let me in! Let me in! Then I went to Houses of Parliament and starting bashing in the doors, bashing on the church doors saying let me in! Then I pretended to shoot at the police.” At other times, he lives in a small flat just a few streets from here. I think it is a council flat, but may be wrong. He doesn’t answer my question about that. He gives me his address and phone number, so I’ll go and see him next time he’s out of the unit.
As for the public sector – we never really get down to it. “There is no need for government. There is no need for police.” Roy thinks that people probably worry too much about government and its direction of travel. He says that Deptford will survive Tories, public sector cuts and whatever else anyone throws at it, because Deptford has always survived and is always there when he comes back to it. “This place is untouchable. It’s no different since the Tories got in.”
A refreshing outlook, as I say – although Roy is the only one at our table who has it. Another older guy we’re with looks to the skies and says “banks are rioters. Government are looters and rioters. They just do it in a much more subtle way. They create a world that we get to live in.”
A young woman who does not want to give her name says she understands that there have been “some strong cuts” to the public sector, but she thinks “they are necessary.” She is “worried for [people who are] teenagers now: “18 and 19-year-olds – those are the ones I worry for. There are no jobs for them. Sending people to university for no good reason – that was a mistake. What is the point of a media studies degree at Greenwich? Nobody [no employer] is going to touch that.”
She isn’t as worried for her own infant daughter, because: “it [jobs and training] will be better when she is older. It will be sorted out by then.”
The public sector she can live without, at least as she has experienced it. “I worked in the public sector for a while and I couldn’t believe it. There were so many people there who wouldn’t be able to get a job in the private sector. They turned the lights off at 5pm and went home. Nobody did any more than they should.” She doesn’t seem thrilled with the private sector, though – or its banking arm, at least: “The bankers? – they have us over a barrel and they know it.” She stops there, because she’s watching Roy. We all watch Roy as he kneels in front of her baby’s pram and tickles the baby under its chin.
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In Lewisham, Tony*, 55, is preparing mentally to sign on for the first time in more than 30 years (he signed on briefly when he left school years ago). He lives in Deptford. He worked fulltime from the age of 20 to 53 – middle management jobs in the public and private sectors. He was made redundant nearly three years ago, at the start of the crash. He gets some consulting work from time to time, but that started to die away about a year ago. That’s because the companies he works for supply the public sector, which is starting to freeze:
“My wife is employed, but we’re down to one salary now and I wanted to see if I had any entitlements, because I paid tax all my life. I also want to get a job. I want to be at work now, but it is hard at my age. The agencies don’t get back to you. You have to keep on trying and I don’t have much confidence now. I was getting some consultant work after I was made redundant, but that has slowly dried up. I feel like I have done some good things with that time. I’ve been in AA for two years now. I haven’t had a drink for six months. I have done some voluntary work.”
“The job centre was a lot better than I thought it would be. I kept feeling that I didn’t belong there. I didn’t want to stay there. But the people at the job centre were good and that was a relief. The woman I saw was nice – a real human being. She had the same issues in her family. She had printed out my statement and she asked me to check it through, then sign it. I’m not eligible for JSA, because my wife is working. I might be eligible for some housing benefit, but I haven’t heard yet, so I probably won’t get it. It was about a month ago when I applied. I thought I would be eligible for something, because I paid tax for 30 years.”
Back on Deptford High Street, Roy introduces me to the elderly woman who lives in the flat below him. (“She’s very good at her garden,” he tells me. She looks pleased when he says that). She says that she is in a hurry (she’s about to take a friend shopping in Lewisham), but she has a few things to say while I’m here. She’s in her 80s and worked for as a dressmaker for a uniforms company until she was in her 60s. “We work so hard, but we get such a small pension,” she says. “They top it up, but you can barely get by. Lots of people are suffering.” She says that she is taking her friend out shopping, because her friend, who is also elderly, struggles to manage her shopping by herself. She wants me to write that down before she leaves.
*Names have been changed: Roy was happy for me to use his full name, so I might in future when I know him and his circumstances better. Tony was concerned about using his name because it will google and he’s still looking for a job.