Thirty odd
years ago I worked in a public building. At the rear there were some staff-only
rooms and, at the end of the corridor by the back door, was Bob’s Room. By the time that I worked there Bob had long
since retired, although I did meet him from time to time as, with his wife, he
would drop by for a mug of tea with his former workmates. Though retired, he still felt he belonged.
His room
was full of the junk that builds up over the years, when people like the
public areas to be tidy but lack the willpower to throw things away. But a
careful look revealed that this room had once been a workshop, equipped with
tools, benches and bubbling pots of pearl glue. For Bob had been the caretaker
/ handyman.
When Bob
retired, he was not replaced. For a start, fewer people had the skills and the
interest to turn their hand to the range of practical matters that would occupy
Bob’s working day. Health and safety concerns meant that simple plumbing and
electrical matters now had to be attended to by qualified practitioners. It was cheaper to discard any damaged Ercol
furniture than to repair it (but don’t throw it away – put it in Bob’s Room!).
However the real reason Bob was not replaced is that this was the beginning of
the era of efficiency savings. The stripping-out of the ‘dead wood’ from the
system that would help to make public bodies as efficient as their private
sector cousins. So now, when a fuse or high-level light bulb needed changing or
the back of a seat started to work loose, a manager would raise an order for a
maintenance company to come in. Eventually, someone in their 20s would turn up
in a company van, make an assessment, cost the job and wait – sometimes weeks -
for approval to proceed. And, in bare economic
terms, I daresay there were savings although, heaven knows, Bob’s salary was fairly
meagre.
Is there a
purpose to this reminiscence? Archbishop
Vincent Nicholls has today added his voice to those who believe that our government’s
approach to welfare is increasingly ‘punitive’.
More and more Christians and others of goodwill are both saying this and
taking practical steps, such as food banks, to show that the punishment of people
on benefits should not be done in our names. Now I believe that welfare reform is much needed and long overdue but it needs to take
place in a compassionate way that recognises that we have reached our present
state because of society’s choices and our collective failures to do what is right.
But also –
and here’s the relevance of the Bob story – because for the past 30 years so
many choices seem to have been made on grounds of financial efficiency alone. Wouldn’t a truly just society ensure that
there are places where people can contribute and belong even though, economically,
no business case would support that?
You may say
I’m a dreamer; but I’m not the only one. We Christians are here to model an
alternative way of living – one that reflects the many hundreds of bible verses
that consistently reveal God’s bias towards those shoved to the edges of human
society. The suggestion that we revert to a society which found employment for Bob is
economic madness. I am content to be thought naive. But our reaction to
what I suggest might be one measure of how far we are colluding with the values
of the world around us, which are content to leave millions of people without a way to contribute and belong.
