Paul tells us about the destructive effect of false hope.

AUDIO TRANSCRIPTION 

Hope… the worst thing you can possibly give someone experiencing homelessness. I know I’ve said it before, but that fabulous line from John Cleese’s Clockwise, really does wrap it up perfectly, where after trying valiantly to get to his destination on time and everything goes wrong, sat in a monk’s habit on the side of the road he says: “It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand”.

And no truer words were said when you apply the word to those experiencing homelessness. You see hope is illusionary, a dream, a feeling. And fuelling that feeling is nothing but fuelling the fires of hell. What many people don’t realise is how difficult it is to find a reason simply to get up in the morning, when for years and years, systems, bureaucrats and society at large have consistently all let you down, to find yourself with no home, no income, no welfare benefits.

Charities will have you running around in circles chasing your own tail, filling in forms and being passed from pillar to post. I mean what’s the point of living, when you can’t get on the step to having a life. That’s the reality of the situation and that’s not going to change with hope, wishful thinking is not going to bring any meaningful change to that situation.

I’ve found myself embroiled with a myriad of organisations of late, all pumping this notion of hope. As the expert by experience (or in other words, the expert on the subject) I’ve contributed to the Social Security Commission whose report comes out on the 25th of this month, the Homelessness Committee on the DWP and through Expert Link discussed the problem with senior Civil Service advisors.

All that fuels the hope for change, that something in the DWP will miraculously shift and those working for it will change from bureaucratic automatons into decent human beings and all our woes will be cured by the very people who have blocked us at every turn and will become our friends and support us in our plight.

This of course is ostensibly nonsense, but there’s that word hope, it gives the illusion of change, when none is actually happening. I’ve been here a 100 times, so I know what’s coming, but it’s those who’ve never been in the room with a minister before, who feel their voice is finally being heard, that concerns me the most. Because they genuinely hope something is finally going to change.

The little thing to go right they’ve been battling for decades to get, is seemingly finally in sight. But like I began, hope is an illusion, a mirage and if you look closely it soon disappears. Chatting to some people from the DWP who you think are on your side, isn’t the same as Therese Coffey announcing publicly that the DWP is to scrap ATOS, Capita and Maximus, that legislation is to change, that welfare will be delivered directly to those who need it when they need it.

No folks, hope is the evilest of tortures. What’s needed is the belief that things are accomplishable and that only comes when you achieve. I know that I now live in a society that is only concerned with money. This is a far cry from the society that I grew up in whose biggest concerns were family and community cohesion.

This means there is little in my life I have control of. What I do control is my art, but nothing can be done in isolation, a decade ago getting a 100 people to work for free for a week if not for months to make something great was never easy, but always achievable. Today, getting someone to spare you just five minutes of their time to support you is nigh on impossible. 

For someone like me, it’s the belief of change that keeps you fighting and getting up in the morning, not some illusionary hope and for that it takes daily wins of change to sustain. That press article in mainstream media getting my point across, the podcast with a million listeners, the film that has been made and if given the right platform could bring about public perception change.

They are real things, tangible things, things you can touch and see and measure. Not the hope of change but real and actual change. And until that happens there is no hope at all.

Links

• Clockwise Clip
• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism I wrote
• Trailer from my film 90 Days Of Hope: Why Britain Chose Not To End Homelessness.
• Clip from my play, Fifty Years Of Trying
• Giving speech to Bob Blackman about Homelessness Reduction Bill at the House Of Commons
• Giving speech to RSA to support Mary O’Hara’s Launch of the Shame Game: Overturning The Toxic Poverty Narrative
• My contribution to Expert Link about DWP form filling
• Museum of Austerity
• My Podcast for The Guilty Feminist’s Media Storm – due out 10th February 2022
• My podcast for Listen London