A small society will help London’s poor

12 April 2012

The Evening Standard's Dispossessed campaign is helping tackle one of the most significant issues the capital faces — poverty.

I was in St Martin-in-the-Fields recently with a large number of people working in the housing sector. St Martin's itself for many years has been in the front line of care for the homeless. The social care centre helps about 200 people a day in central London.

On this occasion we were celebrating the life of one of the great housing reformers of the 20th century, Father Basil Jellicoe. He is remembered as a man of manic energy and founder of the St Pancras Housing Association. He campaigned for better housing in Somers Town, which lies between Euston and St Pancras stations. In the 1920s it was one of London's worst remaining slums. Jellicoe said that "bad housing was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace".

Looking back can reinforce hope that real improvement can be made with a combination of the right kind of passion and down-to-earth practical wisdom.

London in the 19th century was a byword in the rest of the world for the dreadful conditions in which the poor were forced to live. Our town became known as "the city of dreadful night". Part of the energy for change was generated by a sober but harrowing description of the realities of life for the dispossessed by the 1884 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes.

Much progress has been made, with charities, local authorities and national government working together. But the Evening Standard campaign is a contemporary corrective to any complacency about the conditions some of our fellow citizens are obliged to endure.

Within the Diocese of London — which serves 3.3 million Londoners north of the River Thames — our parishes cover some of the wealthiest and some of the most deprived areas in Europe. The disparities are stark. According to a 2010 review into health inequality titled Fair Society, Healthy Lives, in the wealthiest boroughs the average man now has a life expectancy of 88 while close by in the capital's poorest wards it is 71.

Poverty also inhibits social mobility. For example, 18-year-old Islington resident Vincent Maduabueke could not afford the £19 UCAS application fee that was his route into university. Poverty stifles the proper ambitions of many of the capital's young people.

In Islington, 62 per cent of residents live in wards ranked among the 10 per cent most deprived in the country. Many of these are in touch with the fruit and veg co-ops, healthy eating programmes, parent and toddler groups and bible studies classes run by London's churches. There are 4,000 churches in Greater London and more than 650,000 Christians worship every week. This is a massive potential asset as the capital faces hard times.

The Islington Cold Weather Shelter project is just one example of the more than 650 local projects run by the Diocese of London, many of them with support from other Christian communities. Run by the charity Caris Islington, the project is supported by eight of the churches of the borough, who offer temporary shelter to some of London's homeless citizens during the winter months. At the same time volunteers at the project have their horizons opened up by getting to know in the flesh some of their neighbours who would otherwise simply feature in statistics.

The eradication of poverty does of course require the resources that only governments can provide, but long-term change is only sustainable by building strong communities and giving them the means and the vision to seek local solutions.

One volunteer at the Islington shelter said "Now, when I'm walking down the street I see homeless people in a completely different way." There is nothing like a face-to-face encounter to generate the energy for change. If honestly we start to build "the small society" the transforming effect, especially in our wired-up world, could be immense.

Christian communities and their leaders live and work in the places they seek to serve. Like Tom Hollander's character in the TV series Rev, they do not commute to work. They are on the front line building the small society with all the frustration and encouragement that involves.

Basil Jellicoe believed that Jerusalem could be built in Somers Town. He was motivated by a love for God — and God as glimpsed in our neighbours — which was not at all sentimental. Love for God is not an emotion but costly self giving of the kind Christians see in the cross of Jesus Christ.

It has become unfashionable to own up to such a motivation but whatever our personal motives it is undeniable that if we all loved our neighbour within our small slice of society then we could all glimpse something more like the heavenly Jerusalem in London town.

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