WHY BLAIR BEGGARS BELIEF
Henry Kelly, known to radio listeners for
his mild tones, is suddenly enraged by New Labour
HOW DARE he? How dare the leader of the Labour Party, Tony Blair, say he doesn't give money to beggars and almost sound as if it is an honourable course of Inactivity? And, as if to add insult to injury, follow this piece of crassness with Walworth Road back-up, that of course he's as caring as the next man but the problem is not solved by giving pennies to men in the street, rather by some as yet undefined and probably, if we're honest about it, undefinable course of massive social action supported by the entire com- munity. Who does he think is fooled by this cant? I admit I'm angry, but I won't be voting Labour in the forthcoming election, and although this won't cause sleepless nights in the Glenda Jackson household in our Hampstead constituency, it will at least mean that having stayed my hand on the ballot paper, my heart, my head and my soul will rest easy. If canvassed I will not agree; if asked I will say that it's about time I too had a go at single-issue politics.
As a young reporter in Ireland some time ago, I cracked open the bottles of Guinness to toast Harold Wilson's first two election victories and was ready to do the same living in Belfast in 1970 when Edward Heath spoiled the party. We went to bed early that night with moist eyes and the feeling that what might have been gained for the outsiders of British politics in the previous four of five years was under threat. In the event, looking back on it now, you'd stick Ted Heath down as a dan- gerous radical social reformer compared to the man who leads the New Labour Party. By their words often ye shall know them, but turning on the submerged groups in our bedraggled society was for me the last straw.
True, he was speaking to the Big Issue whose agenda — and a noble one it is too — is well-known. Did Tony Blair not know it? Does he still not know it? Did none of his chauffeur-driven spin doctors take him aside and say words to the effect that even a hint of compassion, however tempered with one of his spectacular 'no-easy-solu- tions' answers, would be better than to be found on the morrow morn lined up with those who cross the street when they see a tramp and feel uneasy in the company of someone who isn't quite au fait with which knife and fork you use next? Some of the people Mr Blair has insulted this week use plastic knives 'borrowed' from fast-food chains. Oh, and speaking of food, hark at John Prescott on the World At One when interviewed by Nick Clarke. The ever-courteous Clarke — I can per- sonally vouch for that since our years working together in Belfast, Dublin and London — began by telling Mr Prescott that he had once been seen by a BBC reporter giving £5 to a beggar. Mr Prescott firmly denied this. He denied it! He seemed almost insulted at the sugges- tion that someone had seen him once do a generous thing. Ye gods! are these people real? Mr Prescott, warming to his theme of having little or no truck with beggars, did admit that there were occasions when, feeling that one of the street people might have needed a hot meal or drink, he went out of his way and bought them such. Ah, so that's it. Charity will be dispensed not according to the needs of the victim, but according to the social sensitivities of the donor. Just like that Cabinet Minister in Northern Ireland years ago — he's an old man now so what need have we of his name? — who solemnly told the House of Commons in Stormont one afternoon (and I know because it was my turn on the gallery short-hand note 'take') that 'handouts', as he called them, or, as nor- mal people call them, Social Security pay- ments, should be made in tokens for food, water and clothing so that recipi- ents, particularly Catholics, wouldn't spend them on drink and taking their children to cinema houses.
Every October for one weekend when I was a schoolboy at Belvedere College in Dublin, I joined my fellow-students in the annual 'flag day', rattling small wooden boxes in the street with little bits of paper stuck with wobbling pins on behalf of our school's charity — the Belvedere News- boys Club. Later in December our other charity, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, had a similar event. The money collected went to look after the families and mem- bers of families, extended or otherwise, of the sometimes barefoot or ill-shod children who stood on windy corners in Dublin and sold morning and evening newspapers. Our reward was free passes for the Adelphi cin- ema if we reached certain targets. Once, a boy collected so much over three days that a famous rugby player gave him his jersey, the jersey he had won as a British Lion scoring tries against South Africa. His name was Tony O'Reilly.
As I stood begging on behalf of others on Dublin's streets all those years ago, a few little extra layers of social conscience were added to those already given by my father, my school and my inclinations. It never occurred to me that I was trying to change the social order of Irish society; no more than, as I walk through Hampstead as I do every day of my life and give a few pence here and there, it occurs to me that I'm altering the fabric of British society or upsetting the Labour Party's fabulous plans to make us all richer, and even the poor better off.
No, Mr Blair, what occurs to me and mil- lions of ordinary folk in this country like me who 'hand a man a quid for a cuppa tea' whether nor not he may want a cup of tea or a reversed forecast on a dog, he sure as hell wants a hello or even the smallest recognition that he isn't totally alone. Down and out he may be, but not without human dignity, a dignity much under stress. Most of us know what begging is about, except we call it being nice to the bank. Most of us beg at one time or another, and there's no difference in my book if we do it for ourselves or for others, in the street or through the post, on behalf of, say, New Labour. I wonder how many Labour Party supporters who have spent decades licking Party envelopes at election time wanted to tear them up this week?
Mr Blair is by all accounts a Christian, a thinker and, I'm sure, a caring man. More care and more thinking might well improve his attitudes to our submerged population before he next opens his mouth only to change feet.
At the turn of the century, the great if minor Irish poet and soldier, killed in 1916 at the battle of the Somme, Tom Kettle, had two very apposite things to say applica- ble to this week's Labour hypocrisy. As the dispute raged among literary critics as to whether Hamlet was mad or only pretend- ing to be, Kettle asked, 'Are the people who ask this question mad or only pretend- ing to be?' Is Mr Blair, on the issue of turn- ing away and leaving it to the Samaritan, mad or pretending to be? Or must we, like Tom Kettle, speaking of politics in the 1900s, conclude that 'the trouble with poli- tics today is that all the goldfish speak as if they were whales'.
Henry Kelly was Belfast editor of the Irish Times from the late 1960s until the mid- 1970s and today is the morning presenter on Classic FM.
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