Back in the year of our Lord 1972, Neil Young released his stellar album Harvest. It’s all killer, no filler and an album I have been going back to on a regular basis for the last 53 years. It’s one of those records where it is is hard to have a favourite track because as a whole it is so good. There is so much power in Young’s work, no more so than on the song The Needle and the Damage Done, which detailed the effects heroin had on many of his friends. Not all the people we see at the imaginary food bank I volunteer at, here in Melchester, are heroin addicts but so many of them are damaged in a variety of ways. If affects me as it should affect anyone who considers themself to be a fully-formed human being, making me simultaneously sad, angry, while presenting a “why the fuck do I bother?” moment, which usually passes soon after my weekly stint ends. Above all, I question how a so-called civilised society can allow such a situation to not just happen, but also to deteriorate.
Obviously, I cannot go into detail about the people we see. That would represent a breach of trust of massive proportions. But let’s put it this way, there are a lot of broken people out there, living lives that are all but impossible to imagine for those of us fortunate to have food in the fridge and cupboards, who are able to drive to the food bank to help out, to go home to a cooked dinner and all the other things we tend to take for granted.
Over my years of volunteering, I have encountered many damaged people. Drug addicts, alcoholics, the chronically depressed and anxious, people will myriad types of eating disorders, terrible illnesses brought about my things that have happened to them along the way (it would be wrong to refer to life choices because many people had no choice at all); many or most of whom live in poverty. I’ve been trudging along to the Melchester food bank for three years now and there are no signs that anything is getting better.
I had a bit of a wobble earlier this year because I started to wonder if I was beginning to run out of compassion. I was going through a particularly dark phase myself and self-doubt became an issue. Was I helping people, making their lives better or was I merely helping paper over the cracks of a broken society? Worse still, was I actually enabling the government to cop-out of its own responsibilities to reduce and end poverty? Under the last Conservative government, I became convinced I was. I was no longer helping in the fight against poverty. Like Mother Teresa, I was not a friend of the poor, I was a friend of poverty. While the new Labour government has not exactly found the silver bullet to end poverty, at least I believe they have good intentions, something the likes of Johnson, Truss and Sunak never did. That alone convinced me to stick with it. The light at the end of the tunnel is not in sight, but I hope and believe it will be someday soon. In the here and now, here I am with all these damaged and broken people. How can this be right? How can this be fair?
I am surprised that some things still shock me. If I see someone in an emaciated state, suffering from severe malnutrition, then I am shocked. If I see a young person with a ravaged mouth, populated by a handful of decayed teeth, following drug addiction, I am shocked. If I see someone who clearly suffers from a serious mental health condition, who should clearly be in some form of care and treatment, yes, I am shocked. No two stories are the same, but every single story is a tragedy. How could being without the means to buy food not be a tragedy? And maybe it was the accumulation of human tragedy that weakened my resolve enough to wonder whether I was part of the problem and not the solution?
I am frustrated by how little I can do, yet really there is only a little I can do. I cannot run them home with their emergency food parcel. I cannot check on them tomorrow to see how they are getting on. I cannot do anything except help someone to survive a fully blown crisis. I wince when I see the condition of some of our clients and then I get home and see multimillionaire politicians tell me that the only problem in our country is migration, who then tell me we should “look after our own first” but it turns out they don’t give a fuck about them, either?
You’d be damaged if you had to come and see us. You might feel terrible, humiliated, even suicidal. All you ever wanted was to have a job, a nice little life and your own little house, your own little children and maybe a cat or a dog, but because of the accident of your birth you end up in poverty and squalor instead of being born to filthy rich parents who are able to propel you through elite private schools and sort out your lucrative jobs-for-life for you. Instead, we have a generation, some call them an underclass, who have no opportunities, no hope, nowhere to live and, today, no food.
“I’ve seen the needle and the damage done,” said Neil Young. “A little part of it in everyone.” Yes, we’re all to blame really. In one way or another, we do our bit to help, to make things better; perhaps by the way we vote, the charity donations we make, the kindness and compassion we feel for our fellow woman and man.
The people I saw today could be your kids in a few years. That’s what I have learned in my job. We’d care a hell of a lot more if it was our own kids hanging on for a fix of heroin, living in filthy squat with not even the most basic facilities and having to visit a food bank to stay alive. Maybe that’s it and that’s why I see the good people of Melchester as friends when they come to see us. There are a lot of seriously damaged people out there. In one of the richest countries in the world, that’s not just wrong: it’s criminal.
