AND ANOTHER THING
Plundering the poor and waging war on the beggars
PAUL JOHNSON
Ihave always hated the Lottery. I hate all forms of gambling, but this one is peculiarly objectionable. It is, in effect, a device to get the poor to pay for the pleasures of the rich. At a corner shop I use in Westbourne Grove, I see every week very poor people, many of them blacks, handing over money they can- not afford to keep alight the minute flame of hope that flickers in their lives — the hope that, one day, their overwhelming problems of want will be solved suddenly by an incan- descent flash of gold. The chances of this happening are infinitesimally small. Instead, their miserable little contributions, along with those of countless other poor people, are divided between a lucky entrepreneur appointed by a commission composed mainly of smug New Labour cronies, and a range of cultural causes favoured by the well-to-do, from opera to excremental art, The sums of money involved are colossal — it is amazing what a tax on the poor will raise — and it is not surprising that people like Richard Bran- son want to get in on the act, or that the lot- tery principle is piously endorsed by the entire arts establishment down to its last fag and faggot. Nor does it surprise me that this morally disreputable enterprise is now engulfed in scandal. I hope and pray that it collapses under the weight of its sins. But it won't, of course. Such a mean and ingenious scheme to trick the poor is the work of a hard-hearted genius, and it has the additional advantage that it was devised by the Tories and enthusiastically endorsed by Labour. The middle and upper classes never buy a lottery ticket, derive all the benefits and, at the same time, have the humbugging satisfaction of blaming the poor for their improvidence.
Now New Labour is compounding its hypocrisy by telling us not to give money to beggars. This is the message of a woman called Louise Casey, known as 'Tsar of the Homeless' (she runs a quango called the Rough Sleepers' Unit), who is to spend a large sum of public money to advertise the anti-beggar campaign. No doubt she is well meaning. Many beggars are drug addicts. That is obvious even to an inexpert eye like mine. Many others who solicit money are part of organised gangs of immigrants. That is obvious, too. The police ought to be given a clear directive to rid the streets of these professionals: they have possessed ample powers to do so since the time of the Eliza- bethans, who called these parasites 'sturdy beggars'. New York has tackled the problem with great success, and there is no reason at all why London and other big English cities should not follow the American example.
But I strongly object to a government offi- cial telling us to suppress a natural human impulse. It is one of the glories of mankind that individual giving to the poor has been habitual from the very earliest times of which we have records. We find beggars in ancient Sumer, in the Babylonian Empires, in the Egypt of pre-dynastic times, in the Greece of the Mycenaean age. Why were they poor? We do not know. The notion that poverty can be completely abolished by human arrangements is an ancient fantasy, still vigorous in our age but rejected by the wise. Jesus of Nazareth said, 'Ye have the poor always with you.' What he meant, I think, is that a certain percentage of the human race will always be pretty hopeless at getting on in the world. It does not mean that they are bad, or lazy, or even stupid, or have vicious habits, It means that, in the true sense of the word, they are unworldly. They cannot play the game according to the rules which the efficient majority lays down. They are often, by nature, generous and loving, with all kinds of virtues and gifts we never suspect; but they cannot work the basic mechanisms of life. This means, quite sim- ply, that they have no money and no means of getting any. Often they cannot even be made to understand the social-security sys- tem, or fall foul of it, or become in bureau- cratic terms a non-person, with no address or entitlement and so cannot get their due. They have no family, or their family is sick of trying to help them. They are homeless but cannot stomach the places where the home- less are directed to go. They prefer the streets. They beg because it is the only thing which saves them from actual hunger.
The philosopher who understood such people best was Dr Johnson. He had known poverty and the sponging-house. He knew his own weaknesses. He could imagine cir- cumstances in which, through folly or mis- fortune, he might have been reduced to beg- ging himself. He thought it wrong to treat begging as disgraceful. For a needy man to stretch out a supplicating palm for help was not shameful but natural, and it was equally natural for one who had a little more than his own needs to fill it. Never rich, or even really comfortable, Johnson made a point in his ramblings round London of filling his pockets with small coins before setting out, so that he could give a little to any poor man who approached him in the streets. His char- ity was well known, and no doubt he was sometimes imposed upon, though he was a difficult man to humbug, When asked how he thought these small sums he gave a beg- gar could possibly solve the problems of such an unfortunate, he replied, 'Sir, it enables him to beg on.' That was a wise say- ing. The doctor thought 'all abstract schemes of human improvement' were more likely to do harm than good (and how right he was), but he had a strong conviction that almost everyone has it in his power to assist another individual in need, if only marginally, by a timely gesture. It might, he argued, prevent the wretch from falling down into an even deeper level of destitution. He knew from his own observations that there is no ulti- mate ground floor to poverty, only endless basements, each more Stygian than the last.
The doctor often emptied his pockets before returning from his walk. By giving small sums he was not just easing his con- science; he was prepared to go much further. His home was always a refuge, sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent, for those who had been battered by life. To invite the poor, who are often disagreeable or difficult, to lodge in your house is a real test of virtue, which only one in a thousand passes. The doctor did more. He found, in each of the unfortunates he thus helped, virtues and capabilities, and made use of them. Even old, blind and cantankerous Mrs Williams could make tea 'better than anyone else'. The great 12th-century Jewish sage Maimonides listed in ascending order various ways of helping the poor. The highest one of all was 'To find a poor man a job'. Dr Johnson got the point of this, and practised it. We do not all have the magnanimity to emulate Johnson's hero- ic virtues, but we can all press a coin into the hands of the poor, and to hell with the pious abjurations of the Rough Sleepers' Unit. Rough Sleepers of the World, awake! You have nothing to lose but your Tsars.
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