The Road to Wigan Pier Revisited

I usually use my blog to discuss democracy, student politics, being northern and inequality, in this post I am going to discuss all of these things.

In the Road to Wigan Pier Revisited Stephen Armstrong retraces George Orwell's trip across the North West. As he visits Sheffield, Manchester, Wigan and Liverpool, Armstrong finds a landscape that would have not been too unfamiliar to Orwell. He finds people who are living in abject poverty and communities that are fractious and often in conflict with themselves. The book is bleak but brilliant, there is never any judgement from Armstrong, he finds solace in stoic individuals, and takes away some lessons for all of us.

For Armstrong the class struggle is not an intellectual play thing, he feels it acutely with every person he meets. Some of the things that are discussed are worth remembering, in the UK 3.5m children live in poverty, 1.6m of those in severe poverty. Despite being a relatively wealthy country children in the UK have a disproportionately small chance of escaping poverty. Importantly,  Armstrong suggests that the poor make some people very rich, including those who take advantage of them, including Brighthouse who have previously posted revenues circa £200m. It is worth remembering that poverty is a construct, capitalism means there will always be winners and losers, and those who lose, lose badly.

It might seem unusual to bring this back to students' unions, but I think that there are things students' unions can do to help alleviate poverty and inequality, not just with students, but with society more broadly.

Armstrong asserts that it is predicted that up 500,000 people will be using foodbanks by 2015. The nutritional quality of food collected from foodbanks is often poor, food is favoured for its calorific content and the time it keeps before spoiling, rather than nutritional value. Students' unions have opened food cooperatives and sell food at cost price, if we are to integrate ourselves better in to the community we could advertise this service further. Students' unions have previously collected food for foodbanks, and gifted food to the homeless. Ultimately, small steps, but not without some good consequences.

Credit Unions are widely praised throughout the book as a means of providing finance at low interest rates. It is possible for students' unions to offer loans to their students without charging interest, especially poignant given how payday lenders are now specifically targeting students. It is probably beyond the realms of the charitable objectives of students' unions to establish themselves as credit unions, but it is something worth considering as part of our wider role in society.

Finally, the book discusses at length that one of the ways in which communities come together is through shared activity. There is nothing stopping students' unions advertising their societies more broadly to wider society and letting members of the community take part in them more readily. We already offer low cost activities to our students, and there is nothing to stop us extending this further.

In any case these are only some small steps, and will only make a small change to a limited number of people. Give Armstrong's book a read, it summarises my feelings on inequality in society far better than I can articulate them.

The Road to Wigan Pier is a fantastic.